Blogs Give Real Boost to Brand Marketing

We came across this delightful little nugget while reading Direct Marketing News the other day: Blogs are 63% more likely to influence purchasing decisions than magazines. 

That stat just sort of popped out at us while we were reading DM News Senior Editor Natasha D. Smith’s take on this year’s trends in social media marketing. In that article she notes that in 2014, Fortune 500 companies continued to embrace social media and seek innovative ways to use it. A new study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth offers all sorts of facts and figures to illustrate this point; for example, 80% of Fortune 500 companies are now active on Facebook and Twitter. “As marketers prepare their strategies for 2015, they should pay close attention to these industry leaders to identify emerging social trends in the coming year,” Smith writes.

Now back to that tasty tidbit about blogs, which comes courtesy of Optimind Technology. Smith had reported this stat before, and by following her link-backs, we found another great piece of hers about how blogs—provided they are done well—have become a crucial piece of consumer marketing strategy for companies intent on building up their brands and increasing sales.

Here’s another Optimind data point: Companies that blog more than 15 times per month get five times more traffic. 

“Bottom line: blogs are impactful,” Smith writes. “They’re changing the way marketers make impressions on their customers. Without question, brand marketers who use these digital platforms to give their customers a voice can be more persuasive. Blogs are influential; they give customers a creed to believe in, trends to follow, and provide products for consumers to advocate.”

Another fun fact from the Optimind shop: “Search engines place the kind of value on blogs unprecedented in the industry, thanks to the behavior of their owners to update on a frequent basis, as well as the rich content their blogs provide.”

Check out the companies that Smith says are “killing it in the blogosphere”: Uber, the ride-sharing service; Dictionary.com (“It’s a wordsmith’s haven”); high-end clothing retailer Club Monaco and HomeGoods. “Personally, I love perusing blogs from brands that manage to tap into a zeitgeist, raise awareness about an important social issue, or that simply catch me up on the latest trends,” Smith writes. “These blogs make me feel as if the brand understands me as a person—even helps me define my own likes and interests. And when I’m on the fence about which brands to buy from, I generally go with the company that’s made the most impact on my life, often through blogs (and of course through unique, quality products).” Click here to read the full article.