The Rise Of Blogging And Social Media
Social media marketing has evolved substantially since it first became mainstream. As social media has achieved a critical mass, a lot of what was done before — such as broadcasting the same message to your entire audience — has become less effective. Now more than ever, your social media marketing strategy should focus on building on relationships.
It is no secret that blogging was the first form of social media marketing much before images, videos, gifs and all such things came in. blogging has its roots back from 1990 but even today blogs are super-duper hit.
There is nothing new in marketing via blogs as companies do it all the time. Today every website on search has a blog section but brands realised something more was needed to prompt the brands via blogs. They thus turned out to Blogger Outreach Program.
Blogger Outreach Program
A Blogger Outreach Program is nothing but a process where a brand or a company joins hands with a group of carefully selected and established Bloggers, to promote its services and products.
These bloggers are individual writers who use long form of content to express their views or share their knowledge on various fields like lifestyle, sports, entertainment, politics, etc. This group of bloggers generally use the given product by the brand and write reviews on the same and are paid for it.
Blogger Outreach Campaigns
Blogger Outreach Campaigns work majorly on word of mouth marketing. This kind of marketing is always considered valuable no other how fast everything else is evolving. But why do brands or companies chose bloggers to promote their products or services even when there are so many alternatives present today?
Blogs are considered extremely trustworthy. People generally consider someone’s genuine opinion trustworthy. Every time ‘X’ number of bloggers in the program mention the company’s name it increases the site traffic. A lot of users are directed to the main website via linking.
While company blogs sound scripted and too good to be true, individual bloggers seem to give genuine reviews and opinions about products and services. That’s why customers tend to believe these personal bloggers a lot. Loyal readers before potential customers. These individual blogs have loyal readers who would any day believe the blogger even before clicking the banner ad of the company before the blog.
Last but not the least, in this program the company gets quality content for its product which is written by various bloggers in the community. And what’s better than original content?
Blogger Outreach Program is usually carried out to create exposure to business from various potential customers. It also helps in erasing misconceptions about the brand’s product or services.
Let’s take a small example, how many of you were allowed to have Kellogg’s chocos for breakfast? Very few of you right? While mothers believed chocos were too chocolaty and unhealthy to be called as breakfast. With such misconceptions, the sales of Kellogg’s chocos started going down rapidly. That is when Kellogg’s decided to take some action.
Also Read: Influencer Outreach Program or Influencer Marketing
Kellogg’s started a Mommy Blogger’s Campaign which was a well-planned Blogger Outreach Program to spread awareness about the health factor of chocos. This campaign was called Khuljaye Bachpan. Various popular bloggers who has various blogs were invited to write their Khuljaye Bachpan moments with their children and sharing it to Kellogg’s along with the advantage of giving the advantage of giving Kellogg’s to children for breakfast.
2 things happened during the campaign. Loyal readers who were mothers got to know that chocos were full roti-like nutrients and were an exceptional breakfast for their children. Sales of Chocoswent considerably up because readers saw their favourite bloggers talking positively about a product.
So these bloggers just like influencers are chosen from varied fields depending on the page rank of their blog, their popularity, number of followers and main themes of published blogs. Various other brands have resorted to this kind of marketing as it helps the brand reach the potential customers via trusted sources.
Author: Ankita Mundhra