How effective is blogging when used as a tool to raise awareness for your brand?
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May 15, 2014
Blogging can be an incredibly effective means of garnering interest. The key here is to provide a lot of value to your community and to engage them in a conversation rather than simply spouting out information. The higher engagement you have with your audience, the more they will organically share your content to others.
A great copywriter can be a good investment as they will create headlines and content that will prompt responses and build engagement.
Also, you can post your most well received blog posts to Facebook and promote them to your target audience and also to custom audiences. This is an excellent way of increasing readership at low cost but faster than totally organic.
One tip though - make sure you have a way of capturing readership into a newsletter or similar as this list will be a valuable resource.
Apr 15, 2014
Not very effective at all unless you have a strategy in place that drives discovery and distribution of your content.
Apr 13, 2014
I do this regularly. It absolutely helps ratings. I also use twitter and pinterest to also build the brand.
They key would be to have USEFUL information on the blog.
Apr 11, 2014
The most important thing a blog does for you is establish your credibility as an expert... as long as your posts relate to your field rather than to your cat's antics. And that is huge! You'll be pretty much ignored if you're not perceived as the expert in your field. Unless your field is the antics of cats.
Apr 7, 2014
All valid answers. Spice it up and increase your online, google pop up rate by simply adding video... Video blog works!
Best,
TalkFusionDallas.
Apr 6, 2014
Think of "blogging" as a cornerstone tool in what is called Content Marketing these days (have a good read at ContentMarketingInstitute.com). What you must do, though is not get lost in marketing babble, or simply hold to safe "brand messaging", but actually have the courage to tell the personal back story behind your company, brand, and what it offers. People buy from those they feel they know. Your objective, then, is to go for an "emotional handshake" via blog marketing. How? Use the power of your story to engage and create the first part of a real connection with your audience.
Apr 4, 2014
It's only as effective as you are. It's a part of social media marketing. Without exposure, it isn't effective. With proper social media exposure, it can be an amazing tool.
Apr 4, 2014
A good campaign versus a great campaign makes all the difference. As a part time blogger, I enjoy connecting with businesses. I belong to at least 10 blogger groups on facebook and opportunities are always coming my way. For those that blog as a living, they understand it more and can relate that to a business. Even if it is a product or service review...or having bloggers at a grand opening, you'd be amazed with the power of the blogger.
Apr 3, 2014
There are so many "kind" of blogging. Some kind are very usefull, some other totally unusefull. Do you want to create a blog only to have more traffic or a better google indicization? This is a smart and basic option for your business, but often is a bad decision for your brand. Blogging is a DIALOG, a true dialog with a COMMUNITY. Blogging needs a person following everyday the platform, a person that create content, that talk with consumer (or even not consumer!), that create a link with them. It's a expensive option! In terms of money but, mainly, in terms of time and energy. Think about DESMOBLOG, a blog created by Ducati for their passionate clients. It perfetcly fitted their passion and the brand awarness raised up.
So, think about the meaning of blogging.
Apr 2, 2014
I do not consider blogging in and by itself adequate for awareness boosting but it is necessary. In the modern continuous partial attention world nobody will read lenghty blog posts, yet people appreciate a story every once a while. See it as a necessary spice to your overall recipe, ahhem element in a media strategy that is.
Apr 2, 2014
It seems you have been blessed with many answers to your question Tony, and I agree with many of them. As a long time blogger myself, and indeed a business person I know the value of good quality blogging first-hand. The internet is actually all about communication, it is very crowded these days with over one third of humanity being online, and increasing daily! It is therefore of immense importance that you present the very best information, the very best quality you can produce. We all know the 'noise' level is very high online. To stand out from the mediocre, and deliver your message you must strive to talk with your audience. It is a strange thing, but for all the technical tricks, and expensive marketing that wealthy companies have at their disposal, it is the genuine writing, and power of authenticity that always captures the most attention-and this is very often produced by ordinary people who work at their gifts in a genuine spirit. So, yes blogging is very valuable and effective, but it takes time and skill to do it well.
Apr 2, 2014
Thought leadership is an inbound marketing tool unlike any other. Because the marketing funnel has been flipped for brands, small and media business, enterprise corporations and public sector organizations, customers have an expectation to find you on social networks. Indeed, putting an effort into becoming a credible author is a high value activity for generating leads and creating brand awareness.
Thing is though, blogging as part of a content marketing strategy must be part and parcel of other earned and paid strategies. In other words, long form articles are not the same as photo blogging on instagram. Be that as it may, brand strategy is informed by people, groups and culture. In my own experience effective blogging is complemented by business intelligence research. For myself, I've been able to connect with clients due to my blog visibility. Great question Tony.
Apr 2, 2014
Hey Tony,
Blogging works better for some companies more than others. If your company has things they like to share on a regular basis I say it's worth spending time in. However if your company would rather focus it's time in other outlets that could promote the company better than a blog isn't needed. Just depends on how you want to use a blog.
Apr 2, 2014
Blogging can be very effective for your brand if done correctly and with a goal in mind. All your online actions should have a purpose. What is the goal for your customer? Who are you speaking to? Have you identified your perfect client? Are you answering questions? Are you telling a story? Creating a blog and any content for your business should have a voice. Make sure you create a plan that designates your main content from your conversational content and keep it consistently themed throughout your website. As mentioned in many other answers SEO has its value with your blog as well. However, writing with a theme will create content that has natural long tail opportunities that will eventually drive targeted traffic to your website. Stay social don't just syndicate your content but participate with it and use social influencers behavior and content to help create your content.
Apr 2, 2014
Blogging can be very effective. Many of the companies that are now industry leaders were/are heavy bloggers; however, blogging isn't purely for awareness. Blogging can impact all areas of marketing:Awareness --> Acquisition --> Retention. I have seen really good content create traffic to a website for years while still providing real value to the consumer.
They were trying to create awareness, build credibility and trust, and ultimately grow their business.
Here is my advice.
1. "Create Content that is Valuable"
2" "Start at the Customer and Work Backwards"
While I agree that SEO is an important element to marketing, you can't create content purely for SEO purposes. I my mind, I see SEO as a result of many actions created over a period of time. I have learned many hard lessons over the last 8 years with SEO. Your content should be written for your customers, and your architecture/design should be written to allow the search engines to easily understand.
When in doubt, refer to rule #1.
Apr 2, 2014
Thanks Heather. Our whole business is about engagement and it's so easy to help our clients with that. Doing it ourselves is another story.
Apr 2, 2014
HA! I understand Tony. Obviously, SEO efforts will greatly be affected by your content, but Scott (below) also brings up a very valid point in his last sentence..."your content should be written for customers....." I have learned over time (and have seen in recent tweets by larger organizations) repurposing material that is relevant to the goings on of the organization and or customers is a quick and efficient way to get started - that is if you are at a loss for content. I have used documents that are still relevant today (rare disease patient population) and re-worked them to help renew the relevant information that speaks to their ongoing situation. If it is helpful to them 5 years ago, and continues to be helpful to them today - it doesn't hurt to "re-post". Just make sure you are making necessary additions and/or changes to the tags, etc for SEO purposes. And remember - ALWAYS label your photos appropriately! Best of luck to you - you will do great!!!
Apr 2, 2014
Blogging is an excellent media for the discussion of increasing your brand awareness. As far as that is concerned, blogging is the portal that made brand awareness as important as it is today.Not only does it give you the ability to consistently feed your customers new and exciting information,about your product but it allows you to utilize customer quotes and referrals to further your cause. In addition, as you are blogging into the social media realm it allows some of your untouchables to provide likes and other referrals that will only further your cause.
Apr 2, 2014
If it is done properly and effectively, it is one of the most powerful tools to raise awareness of your brand. Making sure you are optimized for SEO, and having social share buttons as well as backlinks to your website.
John Hardy
Apr 2, 2014
Dear Tony,
from my point of view blogging is one of the most rapid tools for raising awareness. Because if we are talking about narrow audience or quite targeted product, concrete blogger has very specific and targeted audience under his influence.
People are highly social, they better trust respected person rather than mass media channels in terms of something really new. One word from trend-setter is more valued than the word from passerby.
Social scheme works like this [Trend-Setter-->Early Adopter-->Mass Followers]
And working with bloggers you directly send message to the Trend-Setter/Blogger, and he/she has very selected amount of adopters/followers. Its like pushing the first domino piece. You start with the first one, the others will follow immediately. It's natural human being. Blogger is like the leader of some concrete community.
In this case you don't have to spend tones of money for huge Reach banner or whatever campaign hoping to reach out to those concrete adopters/followers.
Apr 2, 2014
Branding is one of the most important part of your internet presence. Without it, no one will visit your blog or trust your recommendations. I've worked hard to brand myself across all social media platforms and also on my websites and blogs and it has helped me considerably.
With branding comes trust, reliability, and recognition. Trust is probably the most important part of this. I've been building trust through over delivering to my clients, getting testimonials from them, and posting them on my sites.
So I guess in my opinion, yes it is one of the most important part of effective blogging.
I agree with Michael, it looks like you have lots of great answers! I was going to add mine but it would essentially just say the same thing.