How bloggers can influence your brand and online traffic
I haven’t written a case study in a while, so now and until the end of the year I have decided to bring you a few case studies of WebGrowth’s clients. We will be discussing several concepts, namely benefits of on-site optimisation, link building, conversion marketing and today a slightly less understood case study but one of the most important: ‘How bloggers can influence your brand and online traffic’.
Last week diletto, which is a South African online deli for gourmet products was mentioned in one of South Africa’s most popular blogs, 2 Oceans Vibe. Seth Rotherham, the chief blogger of 2 Oceans Vibe, wrote a funky article about their new product range which is now available to purchase online. You can read their article here.
This article did not happen over night and is fruits of good old school relationship building.
Martin and Francis, the owners of diletto, went out of their way to meet up with Seth over coffee (last year December). Fortunately the guys from diletto sell top class products so getting the attention of Seth wasn’t too difficult. In most cases meeting over a cup of coffee is difficult because bloggers can be anywhere in the world.. So if you in the same city take advantage of this luxury! With regular meetups, commenting on Seth’s blog and giving Seth a few freebies for him to taste and enjoy, their friendship has grown. With patience and perseverence comes success, after 9 months of building the relationship Seth has written a vibey article about diletto’s products. Below is a graphic representation of how one article has the ability to create “skyscrapers” in your analytics. Their traffic increased by just under 1000% on 2 September 2009.
Optimising a blog article: Looking at the article Seth wrote, the anchor text linking back to diletto’s product pages is “here“. This is not ideal but 2 Oceans Vibe has strict policy on outgoing links so unfortunately we could not optimise the anchor text for targeted keywords.
Advice: In most cases bloggers are open to suggestions for optimisation so always ask first before they write the article.
Next week be sure to read my article on techniques on “How to building relationships with bloggers“.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
This is a good old-fashioned marketing technique but it strikes me as border-line bribery – which I’ve never had a problem with so long as it isn’t abused.
What would be an alternative option to getting a vibey article written about one’s website by one of the top bloggers – without the giving of freebies and other such gestures?
An insightful article Neil.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Hi Kosta
Yes, it is border-line bribery but hey, Seth makes it very clear that he enjoys freebies.. So diletto gladly enjoy giving him a few products to test. This is where you need to understand how to get the bloggers full attention.
I will write more about ways to establish friendships amongst bloggers in a post next week.