Blogs rank among the top five “most trustworthy” sources of information on the internet. This gives bloggers an enormous amount of influence over purchase behaviour and brand reputation as people who follow bloggers tend to relate to them and trust their opinions.
Businesses can use this to their advantage by collaborating with bloggers to gain more exposure for their brand. However, in order to be effective, it’s important that businesses carefully select the right bloggers and form genuine partnerships that are mutually beneficial.
Here are a few ways in which working with bloggers can be valuable…
Influence brand reputation
Bloggers carry a lot of influence with their audience and they can help elevate the perception of your brand. By engaging with your brand, they can increase your visibility and help to form positive associations which will strengthen your brand reputation.
Impact your SEO
Bloggers can add valuable inbound links when they mention your site on their blog. Not only can this help to drive traffic to your site but the link will benefit your SEO as quality inbound links contribute to your Ad Rank.
Drive traffic to your site
Through mentions on social media, a blog post or a review of your dating site, bloggers can drive traffic by sharing relevant links with their audience. Remember to specify where you’d like them to drive traffic to, for example you could set up a specific landing page so that you can track the volume of registrations you get from the partnership.
Increase brand awareness
By blogging about your brand or mentioning it on social media, bloggers can increase your brand awareness. While not all of their followers will be single and looking to try online dating, brand awareness can help add credibility to your brand. If they decide to try online dating in the future or recommend it to a friend, they are likely to recommend your site as it will seem familiar and reputable.
Before you start working with bloggers, it’s important that you decide on your objectives so that you are clear on what you want to achieve from the partnership. It’s also important that you understand your audience. You need to understand the age, location, interests, hobbies and desires of your audience to then work out who they will be influenced by.
It’s worth doing some research into which bloggers have a similar audience to your target market. First, see if any bloggers have previously engaged with your brand. They could be previous users of your site or they could have engaged with your brand on social media. Finding a blogger with a connection to your brand makes the partnership stronger and more genuine.
While there is no guarantee of how effective the partnership will be, taking the time to choose the right bloggers to partner with will make a difference in the amount of exposure your brand gets with the right audience.