The Power of Blogging

With the beginning of the 21st century, the era of the so called web 2.0 was introduced. The term describes a new utilization of the internet: the second generation of the World Wide Web is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 is mainly associated with websites that incorporate a strong social component, involving user profiles and friend links.

The New Age

The new age encourages user-generated content in forms of text, video, and photo postings along with comments, tags, and ratings. New popular 2.0 websites such as Youtube, Facebook or Instagram, differentiate form web 1.0 in terms of technologies, structure and sociological aspects.

New technologies are used to allow the site user interaction. Therefore the purpose and layout of the sites has changed. And through that, networking and sharing becomes most important. Information now is both created and received by end users. The digitalization itself and the shift to web 2.0, have completely changed the internal and external environment of companies in every aspect, making it more dynamic and information flows faster and collaborative. But above all, it has influenced communication strategies of companies, through a new created job opportunity for end users: Blogging.

Changing rules for Sales & Marketing

Due to the new functionalities and possibilities the web offers now, the power of publishers has been increased enormously. This has especially changed the rules for marketing and sales strategies. Without integrating Blogging in a company’s communication mix, it is hard for a company to stay competitive. People use the web to review products, gain information about companies or get inspiration for their partners’ birthday present. All those information are mostly researched on particular websites. Websites and online platforms that encourage people to share and connect each other’s knowledge.

This new form of gaining knowledge demands specialists for certain topics: Bloggers. Most of the blogs are about specific, targetable topics. For example, think about travel blogs. Travel blogs link almost everything from insurance products to backpacks. To prepare their travels, a lot of people use travel blogs to do their research and base their purchasing decisions on recommended and tested products of a blogger.

3 reasons for the exponential impact of blogs

But why do bloggers have such an exponential impact on sales and marketing strategies of companies? Here are the three most important reasons:

First of all, consumers trust bloggers. They are considered more authentic, sincere and credible as sources of information than advertisements. They spend years developing a strong and dedicated readership through unique content based on their authenticity, lifestyle, values and experiences. Their opinions can be seen as equal to the opinion of a trusted friend or family member. They become opinion leaders. So if you as a company manage to build an authentic relationship to a highly ranked blogger, you also win the trust of an incredible amount of followers being your target group.

Furthermore, bloggers themselves are important multipliers. They are well networked, and for this reason, the content posted on their blog has the potential to go viral on the web. Mostly, they use other social media channels like Instagram and Facebook as well to spread their content.

Additionally, a blogger is knowledgeable of SEO and recommends addressing topics and keywords that increase the relevance of products or companies to optimize search engine results. Bloggers also use guest blogging to share their expertise. Guest blogging includes both creating content for a different blog or featuring guest posts. In both terms it is an opportunity to increase both parties traffic.