Sunday, January 24, 2016

Impact of Blogs on Advertising

There was a time when companies overlooked the bloggers when setting aside a budget for their sales and promotional campaigns. But the way that blogging has took off in the past few years has had an immense impact on the way the companies think. They fix a separate amount for campaigns which are specifically targeted towards the bloggers and online influencers. The huge fan following and social media presence that these influencers have is enough to sway the public and masses towards your product.

Today the companies are targeting niche bloggers to review their products before launching them and throwing lavish product unveiling ceremonies where these bloggers are invited especially so that they can then write about the product and the company on their blogs and promote it on their social media sites like facebook and twitter. These companies built relationships with the bloggers and the bloggers become the face of the company.

The influx of internet and the easily availability of online content means that people are generally swayed by reviews of bloggers rather than the commercial ads being shown on the television or the jingles being sung on the radio. I, for example, read a lot online before buying a new electronic product just to see what the users who have actually used the product have to say about the same. Word of mouth still rules but reading a user review is the second best thing. After all we cannot trust the big superstars who we know are not actually using the products that they advertise.

The online contests, campaigns and blogger meets that the companies sponsor creates waves in the online world and people who may generally not even know about a product get to know it better. Having bloggers write about their product also means an increased online presence which is always a good thing. Having campaigns which require the bloggers to include your website link in their post increases your chances of occurring higher in Google search as compared to your competitors as your website will have a lot of in-linking blogs and a lot of link juice will be passed on to your website.

The companies must recognize that providing well written and enlightening posts on one’s blog can be a time consuming job and it can be challenging to do so for any part time blogger. Thus the remuneration that they provide must be adequate and they must not look to get the things done for free. No good blogger with a vast following will ever do anything for free.

Thus blogs have certainly taken the advertising world by storm and more and more companies are finally recognising the power of blogging and are giving them their due. I feel that blogs are here to stay and they can create an even bigger impact in the times to come.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

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