WordPress (2006) claim that every single month a massive 409 million people view blogs. If the sheer amount people viewing blogs don’t encourage you to start a blog for your business, maybe the following points will change your mind!

Reasons for making your business have a blog

The increase of traffic to your website

If you have a website for your business, you want as many people being driven to it as possible, and the use of blogs are a great way at doing this. That’s because it creates more pages on your website index, thus having more phrases and topics that will show up in search engines, generating multiple ways that people will be put through to your website. Without having blogs on your website, you are not creating any new features, resulting in a lack of traffic being driven.

Blogs give your website new content

How often does your website get updated? Most websites very rarely get updated with new content, which can result in many visitors getting bored and eventually stop coming back. Due to blogs being made fairly often, there is a constant flow of new material, which could keep customer retention and engagement because they know that there is always going to be new content for them to look at.

Discover audiences you never had

Once a business is established and the target audience has been connected with, it’s very hard for them to then reach another audience. That’s where blogs come in handy, because blogs are written informal and do not focus on any specific topic, they are able to seen by people that would not necessarily associate with that business. An example being Tesco’s, if someone shops at Aldi there is very little chance of them changing their buying habit and start shopping at Tesco’s as they are not actively looking to change. However if they were to come across one of Tesco’s blogs on cooking recipes that had been shared on social media, there could then be a possible connection formed and a chance that the person will give Tesco’s a go.

The above image shows Tesco’s recipe blogs.

Build relationships and brand loyalty

Due to blogs being very informal a closer relationship between the customer and the brand can be built (Business Know-How, 2016). With informal language being used, blogs can be come across much more personalised to the reader enabling them to relate to the business. Plus readers are able to comment on blogs, which creates direct contact, which can increase brand loyalty by both, the person that posted the comment and others that see it. This is where the Equity Theory applies, when both parties are receiving an equal amount of effort of what they are putting into the relationship (Pritchard, 1969). For example the reader is putting in effort to view recipes from Tesco and then receive the information they are looking for, thus gaining an equal amount of effort. According to Forbes (2016), 81% of those that read a blog believe the content information. This can benefit a business hugely as it increases an individual’s trust within the brand.

Awareness is created long term

Posts on Facebook and Twitter fade out of the public eye as quick as they are made, within a matter of weeks no one is viewing the post. This is not the case with blogs, according to (Hubspot, 2016) awareness of a blog post actually increases, because when the views increase it also climbs the search engine ranking. Then eventually the blog will be at the top of the search results, which increase the chance of someone clicking the link.

In the first month of a blog release it may have little amount of interest, although as you can see by the chart above, interest will steadily increase each month (Hubspot, 2016).

Potential drawbacks

Time and cost

Blog are not easy to write! If you want your business to have a successful blog then you need to have excellent writing skills, if not then you need to hire someone to create blogs, which can end up costing a lot of money. Time is a big issue when it comes to blogs, they take a long time to write and if you want to keep customer retention you need to create a new blog as often as possible. Avon is an example of a business with an excellent blog, they have many different blog writers (which will cost a lot!) and release at least one blog every day.

Overall, there are many reasons for your business to start blogging especially if you are aiming at increasing loyalty and reach a wider audience. That’s if you have the time or money to enable you to do so!

Useful links of businesses with successful blogs:

http://www.avonbeautyconnects.co.uk/t5/Avon-Beauty-Blog/bg-p/beauty_blog

http://your.asda.com/news-and-blogs

https://realfood.tesco.com/blog.html

Useful links to give more variety of the pros and cons of using a blog:

http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/negative-side-using-blog-6113.html

http://www.jasminedirectory.com/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-blog-marketing/

http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/blogbenefits.htm

Bibliography

Business Know-How. (2016). The Pros and Cons of Business Blogging. [online] Available at: http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/blogbenefits.htm [Accessed 5 May 2016].

Pritchard, R. (1969). Equity Theory: A review and critique, Organizational Behaviour and Human Performance. Vol. 4, No 2, p176-211.

Forbes. (2016). Forbes Welcome. [online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/03/28/building-trust-how-blogging-can-improve-customer-relationships/#678344cb7a48 [Accessed 5 May 2016].

Hubspot. (2016). Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing. [online] Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-benefits-of-business-blogging-ht#sm.00000yb7roasp6cu4tb9pg3cpqddj [Accessed 5 May 2016].

WordPress.com. (2006). Stats. [online] Available at: https://wordpress.com/activity/ [Accessed 5 May 2016].

Only in recent years has Vlogging become another form of marketing for retailers, although the big question is, are they even worthwhile? CMO (2016) claim that Vloggers reach around 1 Billion people and that the power of Vlogging is only just beginning and is sure to become an extremely powerful form of marketing.

The aim of this blog is to analyse the advantages and disadvantages to determine whether the use of vloggers for marketing should be adopted or left well alone.

Advantages

There are many businesses that are now using Vloggers as a key marketing strategy, here are just some of the benefits, which could suggest why they are using them:

Provides authenticity

Many retailers really struggle to gain authenticity from consumers because they seem more like a business instead of a person. Therefore having a member of the public who is not associated with the business, yet reviewing the product and giving good feedback, is seen by viewers as a genuine honest review. Furthermore, there is a high potential that subscribers are going to imitate the Vloggers buying habits, as they want to be able to relate to them as they are seen as role models. The videos created contain a high amount of personalisation, as the viewer sees the Vlogger more of a friend than someone just trying to sell a product or service. Personalisation is incredibly important as it keeps the viewer engaged as they feel like the video is unique and aimed at them specifically (Jung Kim, 2008).

Cost effective

Marketing via the use of vloggers can be a very cheap form of marketing. Vloggers are given incentives by the business to give a positive review of their product/service, in the form of gifts or money. Obviously if a Vlogger has an extremely large amount of subscribers, like Zoella, the incentives need to be pretty large otherwise there is a high possibility that they won’t do it. However, there are other Vloggers that still have quite a sum of followers that will accept a small incentive.

Reach target audience

Using already established Vloggers is an excellent way for retailers to guarantee they are reaching their target audience. This is because the Vloggers can see who their subscribers are, so they know who their audience is. Furthermore, the audience of the Vlogger are generally the same age because they relate more, which creates huge engagement levels (Retail-week, 2015). Two examples are shown below of how retailers have cleverly selected the Vlogger to advertise for them to reach their audience.

Zoella (Youtube, 2016)

Boots managed to get Zoella to do a make-up haul Vlog. Zoella’s audience on Youtube are aged between 16-24 and are female, which is the age group that Boots want to reach regarding make-up sales. She managed to gain a staggering 2,497,762 views.

Chengman (Youtube, 2016)

Topman enlisted Chengman to create a Vlog for male clothing. Chengman’s target audience is males in the age bracket of 16 – 24, which is the audience that Topman want to appeal to. Chengman received 23,051 views for his Topman Vlog.

Disadvantage

There is no control of the content!

Businesses love to have control over everything they can to minimize risk, which could prove to be a big problem if they are intending to use a Vlogger as a form of marketing because they have no control whatsoever. Yes, they can tell the Vlogger what they want them to talk about, but how the Vlogger does it is down to them. This could be a problem, if the Vlogger mentions something in the Vlog that a lot of people don’t agree with, for example how much they love Donald Trump, the brand being advertised in the video could then be associated with him, which could lead to a damaged reputation. Although the risk of something like that happening is low, is it worth it?

Vlogs don’t work for all audiences

If the brands target audience is aged over 25, research shows that they are 4 times less likely when compared to the 16-24 age bracket, to view a blog (CMO, 2016). So there’s pretty much no point in somewhere like Marks & Spencer using them.

Not good for finding out about a new product

Research suggests that the use of Vlogs is not beneficial for creating awareness for new products, with only 7% of Internet users claiming to actually being made aware of new products (Telegraph, 2015). This information suggests that viewers are only focusing on the content of the Vlogger they are following and not actively looking for any product/services that they can buy.

So what’s your verdict?

With this form of marketing there are just as many benefits as there are negatives. However it really depends on what the business is, and who the target audience are. Retail shops like Boots, Topman, Superdrug, and JD sports may benefit out of using Vloggers because their target audience is 16-24 year olds, which is the age bracket most engaged to viewing Vlogs. Also retailers that are really struggling to connect with their audience may benefit from them due to the high engagement levels created. Although as mentioned, there are risks that can occur and lack of control of the content in the video is a considerably high one. After all, it only takes one bad video to really damage your reputation.

Some useful links regarding the pros and cons of using Vlogs as a marketing initiatives are below:

http://www.doubleshot.tv/three-key-benefits-of-vlogging-that-will-strongly-improve-your-marketing-efforts/

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1332870/why-vloggers-may-not-next-big-thing-brands/

http://www.atlargeinc.com/insights/pros-and-cons-vlogging-video-blogging

Bibliography

Bourne, L. (2015). How Authentic Can Vloggers Be When They’re Being Paid Millions By Brands?. [online] StyleCaster. Available at: http://stylecaster.com/beauty/how-authentic-can-vloggers-be-when-theyre-being-paid-millions-by-brands/ [Accessed 5 May 2016].

Cmo. (2016). Are Vloggers The Next Content Marketing Frontier?. [online] Available at: http://www.cmo.com/articles/2015/5/11/are-vloggers-the-next-content-marketing-frontier.html [Accessed 5 May 2016].

Jung Kim, M. (2008) A case study of mobile advertising in South Korea: Personalisation and digital multimedia broadcasting, Journal of targeting, measurement and analysis for marketing. Vol. 16, No 2, p129-138.

Retail Week. (2015). Comment: Vloggers can provide retailers with the authenticity they often lack. [online] Available at: http://www.retail-week.com/topics/marketing/-comment-vloggers-can-provide-retailers-with-the-authenticity-they-often-lack/5072188.fullarticle [Accessed 5 May 2016].

Telegraph (2015). Why vloggers are a waste of time and money for brands. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/11393587/Why-vloggers-are-a-waste-of-time-and-money-for-brands.html [Accessed 5 May 2016].

YouTube. (2016). Huge Boots Haul | Zoella. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty0PScqt1w8 [Accessed 5 May 2016].

YouTube. (2016). TOPMAN’S BRAND AMBASSADOR. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVJ-Iz88k-o [Accessed 5 May 2016].