The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies and users to pay attention to bloggers, which allowed the latter to monetize their hobbies. As recent video marketing statistics show, the credibility of a blogger is 65% higher than that of classic advertising, and 92% of consumers make a purchase decision based on recommendations and reviews from other people. The state of things has made many re-approach the way they run a blog and pay special attention to content marketing trends that dominate in the niche in 2021. In this post, we will talk about the future of blogging, how to make money blogging, and the ways businesses can integrate it into their marketing strategies.
How to Use Blog in Your Business?
The influence marketing market reached almost $ 10 billion in 2020 with a predicted 40% annual growth rate, according to the Benchmark Report 2020 made by Influencer Marketing Hub. Public authorities have created an aura of consumer confidence around themselves having the entire influence concept based on it. For example, according to a study by HubSpot, 71% of users make a purchase decision based on social media recommendations.
The main platforms of the influencer industry are YouTube and Instagram. The target audience is millennials. A personalized approach is important to them, and they have a great need for their opinion to be taken into account and considered significant. This generation draws brands’ attention to social issues. For example, Starbucks and American United decided to use alternative plastic because of a video of a stuck turtle that went viral online.
What Can You Achieve?
There are a couple of goals that you can achieve by integrating blog and influence marketing into your strategy.
#1 – Create Demand for a New Product
When a brand is just entering the market or launching a new product in a product line and needs to attract buyers to it, influence marketing comes to the rescue. Danone coped with this task with its Activia Challenge, which launched a challenge of useful habits through opinion leaders. For two weeks, bloggers participating in the Activia Challenge received a breakfast package with thick Activia yogurt, shared their impressions on social networks, and invited readers to join the competition on the project page. As a result, the coverage of the campaign exceeded the planned KPIs and reached 505,265 contacts.
#2 – Increase Brand Awareness
You can make sure that more people know about your company and will easily distinguish you from the crowd of your competitors. A good example of native promotion is Philips Lighting advertising for their healthy bulbs. Having identified the audience of caring mothers who share their findings with subscribers, a presentation in organic style was chosen, where a blogger showed how to use light bulbs at home. As a result, organic integration indicators exceeded the market average by more than 20%. This helped to break away from the competition and build awareness among the audience about the advantages of the advertised lamps.
#3 – Increase Customer Loyalty
It is easy to ensure the loyalty of your target audience if they already trust the opinion leader who you work with. For example, Loreal launched a project in which KOL’s advertised the company’s products and encouraged users to participate in a flash mob. In such a way, the company has earned the trust of thousands of women from around the globe.
#4 – Process Customer Objections
It is possible to effectively work with customer objections through an influencer if a brand understands its target audience well and knows where the deals fail. This way, a blogger can address possible objections in advance and answer the most frequent questions of potential customers.
#5 – Increase the Number of Subscribers/ Customers
This can be the goal when a brand advertises a profile or a channel. However, if your goal is to boost organic traffic to your site, you can always ask a blogger to place a link to the online resource, thus, encouraging people to visit it.
How to Achieve the Best Results With Blogging?
High-quality content is the key to retaining your target audience. It is a sustainable way to demonstrate your expertise, product, or company benefits, as well as make money blogging. The importance of quality content as one of the integral elements of marketing has become significantly higher. In order to be at stake, it is important that you are aware of fresh content marketing trends and follow them closely. Let’s take a look at what makes the blogging industry going.
#1 – Video
Experts say that video content is gaining popularity and effectiveness. By 2021, no one doubts this fact. Interestingly, 70% of consumers watch a video about a product before purchasing it. Video content marketing will definitely continue to rock in 2021.
People love informative videos that tell them everything they need to know in 2-3 minutes. It’s definitely better than reading dozens of articles to find the right product. When creating videos, you need to ensure that they are high quality and that the presented information can be trusted. To make sure that thousands of people watch multimedia content that you create, you can do SEO optimization and video promotion in different channels that your target audience uses most often.
#2 – Personalization
Personalization can be effectively implemented through content, but it is still often limited to greetings by name. Try these tricks to make personalization a part of your content marketing strategy:
- Recommend content based on the interests of the reader;
- Sort content based on the info presented, its format, and specific tasks;
- Select potentially interesting newsletter materials for your audience;
- Prepare tests and quizzes.
In this regard, you can resort to an Amazon affiliate marketing program aimed at content creators, publishers, and bloggers who want to monetize their traffic. What is affiliate marketing? Check Amazon’s page to know all about it.
#3 – Live Broadcasting and Streaming
No matter how powerful the Internet is, it will not replace live human communication. Self-isolation forced us to get out – users went live and began to share emotions through screens. It is the right time to step in with live broadcasts and streaming. You do not necessarily need some tech skills to get started with live broadcasting and streaming. It is simply enough to have a powerful screen recorder at hand.
#4 – Interactive Web Stories
Interaction and storytelling have come together and created a new content format – web stories. It is engaging content that allows users to immerse themselves in the story and sometimes influence their behavior. This is how subscription based blogging works.
#5 – Podcasts
What are podcasts, and what makes this type of video content so popular? In 2020, podcasts were listened to much more often than in 2019. In 2021, this trend hasn’t changed its direction and drives the market in full. What is more, the format has become even more effective and promising. Now, people have already left their homes and returned to their routine tasks, which means that it is more convenient for users to listen to the content again. As a result, podcasts are again becoming an effective channel for communication with your audience. You can use Apple podcasts to go online and communicate to your customers and partners directly.
Effective Blogging That Makes Marketing Fly in 2021
In the context of the pandemic, many customers have gone online, which undoubtedly has a negative impact on offline retail. During the lockdown period, the habit of online shopping has been entrenched in the mind of a buyer and has. People no longer want to purchase products/ services offline when there is an option to do the same when sitting in the comfort of their homes. Luckily, with effective marketing tools and approaches, it is possible to change the situation and establish a strong connection between a brand and its audience. This is where blogging and influence marketing come in handy. Attract new customers, increase audience loyalty to the brand, and boost your ROI.
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With the pandemic affecting affecting most lives onlime marketing become a big thing in 2021. Affiliate marketing is on the rise as one of the ways firms and enteprenuers hire influential people to help advertise their product and genarate more sales.