How brands can benefit from audience participation, too

Last week we posted some findings from a research article that showed that media organizations who use Rock Content get more citizen engagement and longer page visits. We explained why it was important from a journalism point of view, but what about for your brand?

Content marketing has become extremely important over the past couple of years, with 95% of CMOs saying that content marketing is important to their business. In a survey conducted by Axxon Research, one-third of respondents “expect companies to publish content,” and 67% of respondents said that they would prefer to buy products that they follow and engage with on social media.

Engagement, for a brand, is incredibly important. Hyper-engagers—people who participate with a brand online more than one time a week—“engage more across every channel and purchase more” says a study conducted by AdAge and Google, with 40% of those hyper-engagers purchasing products online multiple times a week. The study’s conclusion? “Those who engage more correlate with those who purchase more and that consumers can be inspired to engage with your brand.”

Real time content marketing tools help facilitate that engagement. According to Susan Gunelius of aytm, “Successful brand engagement taps into emotions and experiences.” She outlines five steps to build brand engagement, with the second step being communicating.

All of this—engagement, communication, buying more products—sounds great for brands, but how does it relate to the research we reported on last week? As more and more brands turn to the newsroom model of content marketing, what works for newspapers can translate and work for marketing teams. In the era of UGC and social media interaction, user participation is at an all-time high. By using content engagement platforms, like Rock Content, user participation can be taken front and centre—increasing engagement and bringing more value to your brand. Take a look at how some of our clients are using content to engage with their audiences:

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