Blogs Rule, But Brands are Ignoring Them
Technorati’s Media’s 2013 Digital Influencer Report is an important read for brand and marketing folk. In it, the authors write that consumers trust blogs more than social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.
The disconnect here is that brand marketers spend more time and resources on social networks, and vastly more dollars on display advertising, search and video.
Via Technorati (PDF):
Currently, the bulk of brands’ overall digital spend goes to display advertising, search and video, with spending on social, including influencer outreach, making up only 10 percent of their total digital spend. Within their social budget, more than half goes to Facebook, followed by YouTube and Twitter, with the remaining 11 percent of their social spend going to blogs and influencers…
…In short, where brands are spending is not fully aligned with how and where consumers are seeing value and being influenced. This has much to do with an essential hurdle faced by most content creators: a lack of metrics and the fragmentation that leads to their complexity as a purchasable medium.
The report’s authors argue that brands need to refocus their earned media strategies on direct engagement with influencers.
Image: Detail of digital and social budgets from Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influencer Report (PDF).
..but aren’t blogs losing mind share?
