Marketing through Bloggers

Why market through bloggers?
Getting bloggers to talk about your brand, gets at the true essence of Social Media. People tend to trust the crowd. Bloggers, by their own virtue of influence, make this easily possible. A smart way is to attract key influencers in your space and have them talk about you. This is the online way of influencer marketing, just getting a few prominent people to help spread the message aka word-of-mouth.

“Blogging is conversation, it’s personable, and it’s informative. Blogging is attractive because consumers (i.e., customers, clients, and patients) feel they are being told a story rather than sold a product or service; and, no one wants to be ‘sold!’ "

Being mentioned in blogs helps in viral marketing your company because most search engines take precedent to blogs in keyword search results instead of corporations or companies.

Basic Reasons for Marketing vis-à-vis Bloggers:

1. Trust: The audience reading the blog deliberate takes time to listen to their opinions and ideas. There is gives an inherent value and trust in what the Bloggers say.
2. Targeting: Finding the right niche is crucial in selling a product. When you market through a blogger associated with one’s company or interests, the market segment is built in and makes an easy way to find your target segment. Also, connecting with the blogger can help you better  understand the type of customer you attract and what they want.
3. Engagement: With the mass amounts of ads thrown at us daily, a way to actually reach the customer for more than .2 secs is by being mentioned in a blog. When people visit a blog, they want to read it and spend time on the content. Also, bloggers tend to analyze which is much more impacting than surface explanation. This engages the viewer on a completely different more concrete level, much better than mass advertising.
4. Word-of-Mouth: The chance of people talking about something they saw on a blog or was recommended to them is much more likely than the chance of someone showing an advertisement to a friend.
5. Its cheap! Advertising on a large-scale level is priceyyy....creating a relationship with a blogger? Well that’s priceless.
6. Being innovative in marketing! The idea of marketing via bloggers is still fairly new...get a head start on creating relationships with bloggers as a marketing tool early before it catches on.

How to Engage Bloggers:

Understand that as the company it is not a standard corporate pitch that is best to captive a blogger. Approach bloggers more as a customer. Explain why they would want your product and how they personally would benefit from it. Bloggers want to agree with and see the value in the company or product for their readers.

Examples:

Forever 21 Campaign with Fashion Toast’s Rumi Neely:

When the Times Square location of Forever 21 opened in June of 2010, Forever 21 teamed up with infamous fashion blogger Rumi Neely to promote the store opening.

This quote from another blogger on marketing explains the efficacy in the campaign:


“The use of bloggers, such as Rumi Neely here, is so much more personal than the use of a celebrity or model – because of the connection we have with them through their blogs. We’re genuinely interested in bloggers too because we like them for their style, not because they’re constantly being pushed in front of us. And that is making this campaign a success.”

-- Joanne Faith via http://joannefaith.com/2010/06/17/rumi-forever21/

KixandtheCity.com:

"KixandtheCity.com (KATC) is the premiere online destination for readers seeking an unbiased, un-opinionated, unique, timely, accurate, and in depth look into the products, people, events, and locations that combine to form Sneaker Culture."

Intel Visual Life The Sartorialist’s Scott Schuman:
This video follows a day in the life of premiere street style blogger, Scott Schuman. It gives you a personal recount of Schuman and connects the idea that Intel is the perfect engine for expressing one's Visual Life.

Questions:

1. What blogs do you follow?
2. Have you ever tried a product/taken interest in a company because of a blogger's mention?
3. Does anyone see a potential downfall in marketing through bloggers?
4. How can we take advantage of bloggers in our Alumni Engagement project?

Links:

http://theiqmom.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/how-to-market-with-mom-bloggers/

http://groupskie.com/blog/bloggers-blog-readers-read-connect-with-your-readers-through-blog-groups/

http://www.therisetothetop.com/davids-blog/why-spend-your-marketing-budget-with-bloggers-new-media/