Building Brand Awareness through Engagement

THE IMPORTANCE OF AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

One of the most effective ways to build brand awareness, while providing relevant and useful content to your target audience, is with consistent blogging. Prior to the technological revolution, “push marketing” in which the marketer pushed a message to the public was the mainstay. In contrast, “pull marketing” occurs when people pull the marketing message because of successful, non-pushy marketing, and they seek out the information. (Roger, 2013) Research has shown that blogs are excellent examples of pull marketing as they generate higher brand attitudes and purchase intentions. (Colliander, 2011). Thus, knowing how to increase the blogs engagement level, and improve its metrics, is an essential skill for all media professionals.

4 STEPS TO INCREASE ENGAGEMENT

Since the goal of pull marketing is to get the customer to come to you, effective blogs require a level of analytical thinking, which is customer focused to increase that engagement. Outlined here are four strategies, beyond SEO, which media professionals need to consider in order to increase engagement with their blogs. First and foremost, it is important to develop a buyer persona, which identifies the target audience of your blog. (Figure 1) This helps provide a clear picture of your customer and helps to identify the challenges, concerns and questions they may have. (Templeman, 2016).  Once defined, you need to speak directly to that persona in a deliberately chosen tone which fosters relationship.  Second, you should make strong use of visuals.  It has been proven that articles with a visual every 75-100 words gets twice the number of social shares and this is key to growing your audience. (Mawhinney, 2021). The third strategy to consider is offering a “lead offer”, such as this one, which adds value and enriches their experience. (QuickSprout) Many bloggers offer a free video series, eBook or checklist which aligns with the blog content. Finally, one should be sure to ask for engagement through a call to action or through an invitation to share the blog by using ClickToTweet, or a similar app, which encourages subscribers to share your content on their networks.  This can grow your audience substantially and also provide substantive metrics by which to measure the success of your blogs’ conversion rate.

HOW TO GAUGE ENGAGEMENT

Unlike a few decades ago, the success of the blog can be easily measured and it’s important to note that different companies use different metrics to judge success.  One can judge by the amount of visits a blog post has had, the amount of new subscribers, the average time spent on the blog, the amount of social shares and the page views per visit.  It’s wise to know what metrics you are trying to meet and to think which strategies will help to achieve them.