7 ways blog content boosts your brand

Sponsored content is all around us. Take a look at your social media feeds - how many articles or posts are you seeing that have been promoted by a brand? 

This type of advertising is changing the way businesses interact with their audiences - taking away the hard sale and appealing to what consumers actually want from their day-to-day media consumption. Sponsored blog posts are a great addition to your inbound marketing strategy - here are seven reasons why:

1. Provide genuine value

When consumers browse the internet, they're generally not looking for a new product or service. Rather, they're looking for entertainment or a solution to their problems.

Blog posts are an opportunity to provide genuine value to your target audience. This means you can avoid a hard sell, which might annoy your demographic, and start to directly address their pain points. When you can prove your brand is informed and helpful, consumers feel more endeared to engage with you.

Users are generally looking for entertainment or solutions rather than new products.

2. Create non-invasive advertising

On the flipside, when ads are irrelevant or fail to provide something the audience is interested in, it can negatively impact the perception of your brand. Around one in three respondents to a Choozle survey reported disliking online ads, and just over half use an ad blocker. The arrival of Google Chrome's built-in ad blocker may also affect the visibility of your advertising if you run non-standard ad units.

Meanwhile, the very nature of native advertising means it does not disrupt the viewer's experience of the website and isn't filtered out by ad blockers.

3. Appear before an existing audience

Sponsoring blog posts on a partner website also allows you to access a more developed, relevant audience. This is fantastic for new businesses looking to boost awareness of their brand. 

With over 800,000 unique browsers per month, realestate.co.nz has an enormous audience interested in all things related to property. Related businesses are able to sponsor posts on our blog to tap into a larger audience than they might currently have.

Sponsored blog posts put you before a wide audience who may share the content.

4. Generate search visibility

Blog posts also have the potential to perform in organic search results. A well-optimised sponsored blog post not only puts your brand before the existing audience of the partner website, but invites new readers who are searching to find your content.

It pays to partner with a business that has high domain authority and a creative team with proven search engine optimisation results.

5. Achieve better click-through rates (CTRs)

Consider your own experience looking at a blog or social media feed. Are you more likely to click on a headline or a display advert?

According to StackAdapt, native links to sponsored blog posts generally receive 5-8x higher CTRs than display ads. Improved CTRs also serve to save you money, as more clicks on sponsored content result in lower costs per click and costs per customer acquisition.

Engagement metrics from sponsored content can provide more comprehensive insight.

6. Increase engagement

Simply being visible often isn't enough to make readers remember your brand. Engagement data such as sharing rates and time on page help to build a picture of how the content is performing both in terms of conversions and building awareness. These become much easier to measure with sponsored content over display ads, as conversions are generally more concrete on-page actions than clicks alone.

Interestingly, native advertising returns higher views than non-sponsored editorial content, according to a survey by Sharethrough. Furthermore, the survey showed readers are more likely to share sponsored advertising with a friend, and experience a 9% and 18% increase to brand affinity and purchase intent respectively.

7. Share your brand story

A well-crafted sponsored blog post will make the most of any word count to weave in the brand's story. The combination of imagery, headlines and language allows the creator to succinctly represent the brand's message, values and benefits.

Clever messaging can shape consumer perceptions and improve brand loyalty.

Sponsored blog posts have the potential to reinvigorate your advertising metrics and build a more positive image for your business. To put your brand before an enormous New Zealand audience, find out how realestate.co.nz can help.