The blogging strategy at Forbes includes selling them to companies

Michael Learmonth of Advertising Age writes Sunday about a previously unreported part of the Forbes overhaul — selling blog space to corporations under the Forbes brand.

Learmonth writes, “The pitch is this: We’ll sell you a blog, and your content will live alongside that of Forbes’ journalists and bloggers. This isn’t the’sponsored post’ of yore; rather, it is ‘giving advocacy groups or corporations such as Ford or Pfizer the same voice and same distribution tools as Forbes staffers, not to mention the Forbes brand.

“‘In this case the marketer or advertiser is part of the Forbes environment, the news environment,’ Mr. DVorkin said in an interview at an empty restaurant across Fifth Avenue from the historic headquarters of the 93-year-old magazine.

“The product itself is called AdVoice, and the notion is that in a world of social media, corporations have to become participants and, in a sense, their own media companies. Corporations these days also have to face the practical problem of fewer business reporters left to pitch. ‘There’s fewer ways to get your message out, because there are fewer reporters, and that’s a fact,’ he said.”

Read more here.