Washington Post discusses how bloggers promote products, like Nokia Nseries

From picturephoning.com I see my hometown newspaper, The Washington Post, leads with Nokia's blogger relations program for its article about how companies are using bloggers to promote products.

FYI:  As I've disclosed several times, I'm part of the Nokia program and established a "Nokia Nseries weblog" to discuss the phones I evaluate (see below) as well as posting test photos and videos.  So far, I've tested the N70 and N90 camera phones and I hope to test the new 3.2 megapixel N93 camera phone with "DVD-like" video recording quality, as Nokia terms it.

Andy Abramson of the marketing communications firm Comunicano developed the program and established two weblogs -- for the N70 and N90 -- to highlight what has been posted. 

Good and bad

Andy posts good and bad reviews, and except for the initial correspondence I haven't received any e-mail or other notice exhorting me to promote the handsets, although I have written him for information.

Nokia sends out phones -- that must be returned -- and includes a little bit of free airtime -- for bloggers.  I have been mentioned a few times in the N70 and N90 weblogs.

Independently of Nokia, Andy has a well-known VoIP Watch weblog and is the co-host on the Internet technology radio show, KenRadio.

Nokia's strategy

Kim Hart leads her article with with, "When Nokia Corp. released its camera smartphone last fall, the marketing campaign cut back on news releases and flashy ads. 

"Instead, the company sent sample products to 50 tech-savvy amateur bloggers with a passion for mobile phones.

"The tactic paid off, as word spread online about the N-series phone, driving up sales and contributing to a 43 percent profit boost for Nokia last quarter."

Server blow-out

I didn't realize the user weblogs were so important from a profit standpoint.  I also didn't realize how popular the information was.  Andy says in The Washington Post, "So many blogs picked it up that it blew out our server twice.

"We were getting thousands of hits per second.  When you look at the body of information that was generated around this, we knew we had something very special."

Sprint also has a blogger program, called the Sprint Ambassador Program, that I, too, am a part of and have discussed.

By the way...

Articles have been written about how the N93 is "available."  Not in the United States.

The GSM handset might be available at the end of the summer or in the fall, but I don't know whether any U.S. cellular operator has decided to carry it.  The Nseries group of phones is relatively expensive.

I've been told that if you don't see the N93 offered by cellular operators you might be able to find it on the Nokia U.S. site (but not yet!).  However, if you order it directly from Nokia be prepared to pay the full -- non-subsidized -- price for it, and it won't be cheap.