Are Blogs the future of online marketing?
According to Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report blogs are more influential than social networks with regards to shaping consumer purchasing decisions. This drives the question; are blogs worth the time, money and energy for brands to utilize to increase purchases?
Brands are constantly investigating and setting budgets strictly for their social mediums including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube instead of on blogging. A survey was conducted by Technorati’s Media, blogs were ranked third most influential digital resources to make consumers purchase. The two other mediums were retailer websites and brand sites, this is very exciting news for marketers as blogs are no joke.
The article goes on to talk about how consumers agree that the value of online communities comes from sharing information with each other rather than the size of the community. Consumers want to know what people are saying about certain products, and blogs are allowing just that.
Blogging allows for people to express their thoughts and opinions freely and in a way, that is comfortable to them. They create an ability to speak to a large audience allowing for your experiences/ story to be told.
To Conclude
Overall, I am surprised with this article as I had no idea just how influential bloggers really were. I didn’t realize that bloggers had such tight knit communities that shared all their insights among each other as well as their followers. Bloggers certainly are an incredibly strong influencer in the world of purchasing decisions and companies would be crazy not to be investing in them. If companies do this, they will gain better insight as to how people are talking about their brand thus strengthening themselves. There is clear evidence that blogging is in fact going to be if not already is a key player in the online marketing community.
