In 1999, Pyra created the product that calls “blogger” and it is an user-friendly program that allows users update information frequently without cost any money. Nowadays, the blogging become more widely used and here are 152,000,000 blog sites available on the internet.

One research found out that the US internet user spend 3 times more time on blogs and social networking than the on email (The Nielsen company,2010) and Hubspot (2010) find out that the company that have blog site can get 55% more website visitors.

And if cosmetic company or any B2C company can writes or makes an official blog site, it is not only get 88% more leads per month (Hubspot, state of inbound marketing lead generation report, 2010) but those blog articles can also influence purchase as well (Juipiter research, 2008).

(All the facts in the 120 marketing stats charts and graphs of Hubspot,2012)

So the blog is a powerful tool that any companies should use to get more new customers and keep remind themselves to the existing customers. Then the first thing we should know is defining the blog.

Definition: Blogs are online diaries where information is electronically posted, updated frequently, and presented in reverse chronological order. (Grace & Rita, 2015)

There are a lot of free blogging platforms such as Tumblr, LiveJournal,Blog.com, but the Blogger and WordPress are the most popular platforms.

Source: http://www.minterest.org/blogger-vs-wordpress/

The blogger is owned by the Google and it is easy to use for the beginners because the Google supports and helps you managing the blog. Then you do not need to worry about its security, backups and you can get the free domain name for your blog.

Source: http://www.minterest.org/blogger-vs-wordpress/

The WordPress gives the bloggers more freedom to creative and make their blog become more appealing to their readers. However, you may end up paying a lot of money to get all the premium features, but then you have variety choices that can meet your own needs.

Source: http://www.minterest.org/blogger-vs-wordpress/

The WordPress.org is an open-source software and you owned and have fully control your blog site that means you will need to manage all your content, security and backups, but if you want, you can get support from you web hosting company at anytime.

The big advantage that using the WordPress.org is you do not worry about the hosted company suspends or even shut down your blog because they think it is spam or it may damage their terms of services.

For example, the Google shuts down Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism in 2008 (Salmon,2010) because it has large number views and incoming links and also the Google the same thing with one of top finance blogger in 2010 as well (Weisenthal, 2010).

How the cosmetic company use the blog for marketing?

The first way to use the blog as a marketing tools is working or sponsored with beauty bloggers.

If your company is already popular or have a good position in a market, you will you have a high chance that the beauty bloggers are willing to review and may recommend your products to their readers.

Example:

Source: http://www.pixiwoo.com/2016/03/soap-and-glory-highlight-sculpt.html

Pixiwoo is the most successful British beauty blogger with their ability to attract millions of readers to read and believe their honest review or feedback about the beauty products. Also in they leave the link to purchase the product in the end of the blog, then when the readers think the product is interesting, they will click the link to find more information and may even purchase the product later (Juipiter research, 2008).

However, the cosmetic company can not control how the blogger will write about their products and the blogger also do not just write a good review about product of company because they give sponsored deals for bloggers. The reason is like Sam Chapman (one of a founder of Pixiwoo) said she only accept those kind of sponsored deals if she really loves those products and would willing to buy them because if the bloggers do not being honest, those readers will not trust them again.

So It does not matter if you are the famous cosmetic company or just a new company, you have to make sure your products are good and then you may research about some beauty bloggers that suitable or their readers are the same of your target market.

For example, most the readers of Pixiwoo (www.pixiwoo.com) are between 18-65 and they can afford those high end products. So if your target market is adult and the products are luxury and expensive, Pixiwoo is a good choice for you. But if your target market is teenager and the products with affordable price, then Zoella (www.zoella.co.uk) is not a bad choice for you because her reader are between 14-30 and she already wrote lost of review about drugstore products.

Source: www.zoella.co.uk

After that you can ask the suitable bloggers to try and test your products and if they willing to do that. Then you can send those products or samples to them and wait for them to write the honest review after using the products. The review may be good or be bad, but you should be positive about it because even if the review is bad, at least you can use the review and the comments to improve your products later.

Overall, I think the cosmetic company should consider blog as an effective marketing method because it is low cost and brings lots of benefits like increase the website’s visitors or may influence in purchasing products. However, the major disadvantage is the company can not control the content of the blogs and it takes lots of time and afford to find the suitable beauty blogger and build the good relationship with them as well.

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