Brands, its time to invest in bloggers

In our first post  on The Truth About Brands and Bloggers , we discussed what brands need to know about how bloggers operate . Part two of our series looks at how marketers allocate their budgets.

It’s no surprise that bloggers are highly influential when it comes to purchasing decisions, but brands fail to capture this influence by investing inadequate funds in to blogger outreach.

While more than half the social media budget of American companies is allocated to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity, just five per cent of the budget is allocated to bloggers. This is despite the fact bloggers have a stronger influence on purchasing decisions.

IMPACT’s study found bloggers understand the value of their influence and are prepared to charge for it.  Bloggers are four times more likely to be motivated by potential professional opportunities than they were in 2012, when IMPACT first surveyed bloggers .

The first wave of bloggers started as pioneers of a new medium, progressing to become story tellers. The next wave are empire builders, combining influence and increased reach and now looking to monetise that influence.  As blogger The Hungry Australian. points out. ‘Blogs are free to read but costly to maintain’.

Historically brands and PRs won’t think about paying for editorial, but bloggers are a new medium and need a new approach.

In the past two years, the number of bloggers earning an income has tripled. But it’s a long way from making a million. According to our study, bloggers make an average of $50 or less per month. And they spend $1,012 maintaining or improving their blog each year. It’s a similar story in the US, where only 11 per cent of loggers earn more than $30,000 per annum.

But, while 87 per cent blog part-time, approximately a third of bloggers view their blog as a profession rather than a hobby.

In Australia, 75 per cent of bloggers earn an income from sponsored posts, 64 per cent from advertising and 22 per cent from brand ambassador roles. Others earn money from photography, recipe development and social media consulting. In the US, bloggers are likely to be charging for a broader range of activities, including giveaways, providing content, sponsored Facebook posts or tweets, video production and focus groups.

Marketers need to think about creating opportunities for bloggers to personally experience brands and reimbursing the bloggers appropriately. Campaigns that fail to invest budget with bloggers will simply fail.

But don’t think this means that bloggers’ opinions are for sale. They fiercely maintain their editorial independence, with bloggers telling IMPACT that they reject up 95 per cent of the offers they receive. More important than money is the fit with the blog, and that’s why marketers need to understand each blog on an intimate and personal level.

All statistics come from IMPACT ’s research study The Truth About Brands and Bloggers which measures the changes in blogging since the 2012 results. It collates international research, a survey of 110 bloggers, quantitative interviews with seven influential bloggers, and a survey of 24 PR firms in 19 countries.