Blogs are all about attracting attention and traffic, and when it comes to attracting attention, hip-hop star Kanye West’s a real master. Last summer, I posted a blog called Say It For You, Kanye West? after Sandra Rose claimed Kanye uses a ghost blogger.   Last week, I blogged about a new controversy (see Do Kanye West’s Blog Ties Tell The Truth?) accusing Kanye of using content and videos from other blogs without properly crediting the sources.

One older news item about Kanye seemed to consist of a happy ending to an even older controversy.  A couple of years ago, now-deceased daredevil Evel Kneivel sued Kanye West, claiming the rapper had copied the Kneivel signature look by wearing a red, white, and blue jumpsuit with an EK belt buckle for the song “Touch The Sky” in a West video album. Evel and Kanye were able to settle that trademark lawsuit through mediation.

There are several important blogging-related lessons to be gleaned here, I think.  First, as I stressed in “Ties That Tell The Truth In Blogging”, people come to blogs to find information.  Searchers need to be able to trust in that information, and, by inference, trust you.  So even if you’re putting your own spin on what you offer in your blog, the fairest thing to do is attribute any material or ideas you got from other writers or bloggers to those sources, either by quoting them directly or by inserting links in your blog to other websites.

The most important lesson about all these hip-hop star controversies, for me, has to do with the way Evel Kneivel came to change his mind about Kanye West.  In the course of the lawsuit, Kneivel had claimed that Kanye was “promoting his filth to the world”. According to USA Today.com , Kneivel was saying that, once he actually met West in person, he changed his mind about him.  “I thought he was a wonderful guy and quite a gentleman.”

Always keep in mind that blogs are more casual and conversational than other marketing pieces, and they are truly a mechanism for your readers to “meet” the real you.  Your blog is the place for you to convey your passion for your own business or area of professional expertise.  And passion, as blogging maven Ted Demopoulos is fond of saying, “is very effective for profit.”

I often reassure my business owner ghost-blogging clients that they needn’t fear critical comments that might be posted on their blogs, since even negative comments help blog rankings.  Nonetheless, after following Kanye West stories for almost a year now, I found the Evel-meets-good-Kanye tale quite refreshing.

Sometimes marketing’s not about what’s it’s about, you know what I mean? We all saw an example of how that works when the surprise hit movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" made a star out of Windex Glass Cleaner®.

In the low-budget comedy film, Mr. Portokalos, the Greek family patriarch, uses Windex to cure everything from acne to baldness. When "Wedding" turned out to be one of the most profitable films of all time, it made a star out of actress Nia Vardalos, and, as an "aside", resulted in a 23% increase in sales for SC Johnson’s product  WIndex!

Business owners, just think about that one for a moment.  The blue bottle of glass cleaner appears seven times in the film, for a total of less than 30 seconds.  The four additional mentions of the product in dialogue makes a total Windex exposure of less than one minute out of the movie’s 95-minute run. That’s been one momentous minute, I tell you! Brand marketing experts estimate that well over one hundred forty four million people have been exposed to the miracle Windex cure.

There are so many parallels here to corporate marketing through blogging, I hardly know where to begin. First, box office results for "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" followed a pattern reminiscent of blog marketing.  The movie attracted a mall audience and earned only $822,000 in its first week of release in April 2002.  But, says Igor Muravyow of ePROPSHOP, Inc., "the praise of movie patrons resulted in the film’s gradual spread from city to city, and….this sleeper became…the highest-grossing independent film ever." The blogosphere is the ultimate word-of-mouth arena, but business owners who expect their corporate blog to generate overnight business success will be disappointed. 

Back in November, I advised including unusual combinations of things in your blog to offer readers a new way of looking at your topic and showcasing your expertise (See Get Tammy Dancing With Elvis In Your Blog). The "Big Fat – Windex" connection, in my view, succeeded because it was so outrageously unexpected. Even so, my professional ghost blogger instinct tells me, the association with the movie wouldn’t have done nearly so much for the Windex bottom line had there been one minute-long mention of the product in the film. The effectiveness came from the eleven short, repeated exposures to the blue bottle.  This is exactly the way blogging works to attract attention on the Internet. Consistent, repeated, short blogs satisfy two crucial search engine criteria: frequency and recency of posting your blog.

If you’ve got psoriasis or acne, or you’d love a thicker head of hair, I really don’t know if either blogging or Windex can help.  What I do know is that in today’s economy, the most cost-effective way to get the word out about your product or service, to exactly the audience you’re targeting, is to incorporate blogging into your online marketing strategy.