WhatsApp as a Blog Promotion Strategy

The success of any blog is determined by the number of people it reaches. For any blogger, the next step after generating a good content is to deploy various strategies that will help him/her to reach the target audience. As a blogger myself, I researched various strategies that increase visits on a blog. Most of these strategies focus on sharing through social media. Currently WhatsApp is one of the chat service applications used by a lot of people. We see a lot of content being delivered in various forms by individuals, or in groups. I thought of exploring WhatsApp as a medium to promote the blog on http://pharmaknowledge.in/. This site was created in the last week of Sep 2015 with a primary focus on the pharmaceutical industry. 4 blogs were posted on this site, since its inception and the traffic was coming in at a slow rate. For the fifth blog we added WhatsApp as a plug-in on the wordpress site along with other promotion strategies. (You can have a look at the Traffic sources in the screenshot below). Let us now look at my experience with this strategy.  

The fifth blog on this site was published on 15 Nov 2015. The graph is a clear depiction of the number of sessions,  which were recorded on 15 & 16 Nov 2015. There was definitely a good increase in the number of visitors to the blog. The traffic source report showed 313 sessions from WhatsApp, which is definitely much higher than any other Social media. 

 

The data presented is for the initial couple of days. Incidentally, the site also saw a rise in the number of subscribers. This small little experiment sets precedence to further explore Whats app as a good promotion strategy. Of course, it goes without saying that is definitely needs to be coupled with other strategies.  

I will be happy to read your feedback and experience, if any on WhatsApp. Also, if you have further promotional ideas for  http://pharmaknowledge.in/, please feel free to share. 

Why Blogs?

“Blogging” as a word hardly requires any introduction in today's Digital Marketing age. We are a part of the world where almost everyone is promoting something, including their own self. One of the simplest platform to promote is using “blogs”. I am sure there will be a question in your mind - WHY BLOGS?  Simply because everyone would like to get heard, and with internet as a medium along with the kind of reach it has, average people like you and me are able to reach the target audience globally with little trouble. Apart from text, one can also have Vlogs (Videos embedded on blogs) with video marketing getting viral these days. The other variant is Photologs, which comprises of pictures. Hence you can find in blogosphere that many of us are writers, readers, reviewers and followers. Blogs as a platform provides a two-way conversation opportunity wherein you can directly communicate with the target audience.

Let’s look at some examples: 

• Consider someone trying out a new cuisine without any know how about the preparation. You have various food blogs to your rescue, one can read the recipe and also see the video demonstrating the preparation.
• A new smartphone is out and you need to understand about the features and what it means to you before buying. Simply check the tech blogs and you will find reviews and recommendations.
• People visit Travelogues before finalizing their vacation plans. This gives them a good prelude to the place; helps them chalk our their travel schedule, and avoid any unpleasant surprise during the travel.

In general, blogs play an important role in the decision making process. You name any product or service, you can find review blogs for most of them. Search engines play a vital role in presenting this information to the audience.

In the time to come, blogging will become even more powerful with more people and businesses recognizing the power of bloggers as online influencers. Anyone can start a blog thanks to the simple (and often free) tools which are readily available online. Reaching the targeted audience is no big deal when you understand the nuances associated with the same.

So, Blogging is the best prescription if your mantra is to keep your target audience engaged and connected.