Viral Marketing on Blogs

In my perusing of the Internet I have come across a number of blogs been hijacked by a company trying to market itself. This hijacking is voluntary as the blogger normally has the following agenda:

they could get entered into a competition

readers could generate some affiliate sales for them

they could have directly received something in the post

or they could have been paid to write an 'editorial' on the company

Now from what I see if
a) a blogger comments on a company to get entered into a competition or to generate some sales they are generally in the beginning stages of blogging and just appreciate the response and recognition (or they just enjoy helping a company now and then and like seeing what response their blog causes)

b) a blogger receives something in the post then their blog is definitely more recognised and official as a blog that matters (recent example on the Ideate blog
(I'm not saying Andrew's blog is or isn't on the 'A-List' now) This is good if the gift is inline with the blog, not sure Andrew would have enjoyed receiving a pretty table cloth from Virgin instead of the flash disk...

c) a blogger gets paid and writes an editorial - I know quite a few people who do this and get away with it, look at gaming review sites. The question comes in when the blogger reports back negatively on the company (this couldn't really happen if the blogger was getting paid as there would be no point for the company to see it through)

So the trick is to do it and do it well. If you are going to get paid for writing an article then great just make sure its what your readers want to read about. If you are entering a competition (Berocca are running one in the UK now, example on Grant's blog)

Grant just pointed out the fact thay Berocca are running a promotion aimed at bloggers which was in line with content on his blog.

So be careful your blog doesn't become a nasty advert plastered site that is terrible to look at and read. The best way is for the company to create/establish an online community/fan base