Yell.com Expanding Content Strategy With 100 Bloggers

First it started showing thousands of how-to video clips through a deal with Videojug. Now Yell.com is recruiting 100 amateur and professional bloggers whose posts it hopes will drive eyeballs to its classified advertisers.

The company is hiring a “content commission editor” who will be tasked with building and managing “day-to-day relationships with a suite of varied content providers, especially bloggers”.

A Yell spokesman told paidContent:UK: “We are starting setting up a blogging network which, in the next few months, will be 100 bloggers writing on a range of subjects.”

In fact, the site has already quietly added some 18 blogs since its VideoJug deal in July – for gardening fans, for example, there’s a gardening blog, advice articles and pictures. But many posts as yet are from unnamed authors.

The motivation seems two-fold…

— 1) Blog articles show adjacent related listings from Yell.com’s directory – that’s an extra incentive for struggling classified advertisers. Yell says it’s acting as the online marketing department for its customers.

— 2) And it seems that some named bloggers have their own motive — to plug their own businesses. The gardening author behind the “McQueens” by-line is Kally Ellis, MD of florists Mcqueens.co.uk. Motoring blogger and Mini Cooper enthusiast Paul McLeod is also the owner of a small car repairs business in north London.

Many of the posts, like this one, also look like classic PR puffery. But Yell assures us it does not offer a product to companies whereby they get favourable coverage on blogs in return for cash. (Maybe they should?).

Yell wouldn’t reveal the commercial terms for its editorial, saying only that there is a mixture of amateur writers and some professional journalists.

The online directory listings business is a tough market in the ad downturn. This is Yell offering its customers something to, in the company’s words, “inspire and motivate” them to engage with the site.

Yell.com became an authorised re-seller of Google AdWords in May, a symbol of how Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has overtaken the Yellow Pages’ long-standing traditional (print) role as the go-to place for local business listings.

Debt restructuring plan: Separately, Yell on Wednesday proposed a new finance package to lenders which would extend its debt covenants to 2014 and pay off £500 million worth of debt through issuing new shares. A further £300 million will be shaved off the total within 18 months, possibly through another share issue or the bond market. The company repeated an earlier prediction that Q209 revenue would be 17 percent lower year on year with EBITD down 30 percent. Q309 is now expected to be 16 percent down year on year. Release.

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