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Vloggers have been around for a while. Since the rise of the US makeup artist Lauren Luke in 2007, personalities from around the world in all industries have been making a name for themselves. Vlogger of the moment Zoella, who is now one of the faces of YouTube, has over 6 million followers, with an average of 2 million views per clip. To give an idea of how big that figure is, The Sun, Britain’s most popular newspaper, averages at only 2 million readers a day and just 12,000 readers on-line.
With the digital world, there is no such thing as tomorrow’s fish and chip paper. YouTube is now backing these digital celebrities and understand that You Tube is now being used as a springboard for not only for the vloggers, but for the brands they partner up with.
And where there is a platform, there is a marketer thinking how they can push their brand through it. Vloggers are a Digital PR’s dream. If done right, a product can be exposed to a huge following that might not have known the brand before. Also, it makes for perfect video content for the brand to use as they wish. What is tricky is to define what type of vlogger is suitable for your brand. Before you start YouTube channel hopping, you need think of the objectives of why you want to partner up with a vlogger:
Social engagement
If a brand feels like it could benefit from a social boost, a vlogger can give this. In the same way a celebrity wearing a brand sparks social activity, a vlogger will do the same. For this to work well, the type of followers the vlogger has on their social accounts needs to be suitable for the brand. This said, if the vlogger has amazing figures (some with over 1 million Twitter followers), a social buzz around your brand will increase engagement.
One tip is to make sure that the vlogger is in the same country in which you’re marketing your brand, unless you are specifically looking to branch out to other territories.
Brand exposure
Collaborating with vloggers can happen in a variety of ways and it doesn’t need to be a simple review or product feature. A great example of creating content with alongside vloggers is Turkish Airlines. Normally the brand sees itself working with high profile sportsmen such as Messi and Kobe Bryant. However, on this occasion, the company took vloggers from around the world including the US, England, Germany and Japan to discover the world with Turkish Airlines. During the #FortuneTeller campaign, nine vloggers were invited to fly to Istanbul to meet up and discover where each one was going. This resulted in nine very high profile bloggers featuring the brand and their journey in two separate videos, giving fans an idea of what the brand is about while showing how they used their gifted trip to produce something amazing for their viewers. As the variety of vloggers was diverse, there was a feed of videos that ranged from Parkour in Honk Kong to food tasting in Berlin and more.
Apart from marketing kudos to the brand and increased engagement through social, the aim of the move was to simply expose the brand to more people and demonstrate the airline’s versatility.
Traffic to the site
A good vlogger who knows the deal with PRs and brands will always mention the brand and the website that the product is from. An experienced vlogger will always give the link to the site in the description page. This is not only for the PR or the client, but it’s also for the viewer. If a vlogger raves about a product, they will know 9/10 times the viewer will want to know more about the brand. This is Digital PR at its best. You have video content with a third party who is speaking about your brand or product with direct links to the site.
If it’s traffic to your site you’re after, make sure you supply the vlogger with the right amount of details about the brand and the URL you want them to include. Make sure the URL is relevant and send the viewer to either the product or to a page where they can learn more. Think more about the viewer’s customer journey than your SEO reasons.
If you notice a vlogger who doesn’t include links, chances are they will not do it for you. Look out for vloggers who do – they need to be on your list.
Sales
This can be the most obvious reason why you want influential vloggers to feature your product or brand, but this can be overseen in the outreach stages. It is important to remember that if you want sales, the pool of vloggers you want to outreach to will be far smaller than one for exposure.
A perfect vlogger for sales should
:
- Be in the chosen country you want to see traffic from.
- Give great details and brand specifications in their video and description.
- Give great reviews – if you have a product that needs a certain amount of education behind it, you want to see it in the best light possible. A vlogger that will just mention the name of the brand or product will simply not cut it. For the review to work, the blog needs to be detailed and informative. A vlogger that gives great reviews to his followers is The Outdoor Gear Review. He is concise, honest and educational.
- Share the same audience as the brand.
- Have a highly engaged community.
Once you have outlined your objectives for vlogger relations, it’s time to make the all important approach. Remember, this should be seen as a Digital PR initiative more than a marketing one. Build a relationship with the vlogger and see how you two can work together instead of pushing product and money and hoping for the best. It is likely that the creme de la creme of vloggers will want some kind of payment and it will be up to you to weigh up the pros and cons of this. For example, could you get numerous vloggers to feature your brand instead of one big name? This is the time to go back to your objectives and determine the answer.
In short, vloggers have now become a fundamental part of digital PR. But, like most new techniques and platforms, brands and marketing can ruin that experience. Do like Turkish Airlines and enhance the experience and give the vlogger a different piece of content to work with. The exposure and reactivity will pay off in the long run.
Author: Jodie Harris
Courtesy: www.stateofdigital.com
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