Every website benefits from blogging, but each industry has its own blogging challenges and opportunities. If you’re blogging for the health and beauty industry, you’ll have both.
What’s great about health and beauty blogging
Beauty and health information is very popular online. Make up advice is now the most popular content on YouTube, and Pinterest is exploding with health and fitness inspiration.
What’s more, viewers take action. Google Think’s beauty shopper study found that 41% of beauty video watchers went on to research products, and 38% visited stores that sold those products. Beauty shoppers also read reviews and look for more information on mobile devices while shopping, as well as before they start shopping. Only 9% of the shoppers in the survey would use a product on the basis of a recommendation from a sales associate or company product rep in a store, while 15% make up their minds based on a brand website. Reviews and product information are the most influential online content. Two thirds of those shoppers visit multiple websites in search of that content– almost half go to five or more before they make up their minds.
That means that a great blog from a small company can have a lot more influence than you might have expected.
What’s tough about health and beauty blogging
You’ll have lots of amateur competition. It’s one thing to keep up with your competitors, and another to stand out in the never-ending stream of private beauty bloggers and vloggers who work for love or samples, not money. The amateur beauty blog scene is the equivalent of hanging out with your girlfriends discussing eyeliner or thigh-toning exercises, and it’s hard for a brand to get the same level of authenticity.
Options:
- Go with brand ambassadors, either on your brand site as part of your blogging team, or pulled in and linked up from their own blogs.
- Use the girlfriend or guy friend voice. Betty Crocker was a kitchen girlfriend to plenty of young wives in her day, and your brand blog can do the same.
- Go professional. Jouer and L’Oreal both show up in plenty of beauty bloggers’ posts, but their brand website blogs have videos with high production values, industry insider news, and celebrity dish the amateurs can’t get.
When it comes to health care, amateur bloggers tend to focus on diet and fitness. There’s less casual blogging about CT scans and cervical cancer. In this space, your blog may be primarily a service for your patients, who need to know that their source of information is reliable.
That doesn’t mean that a health blog can’t drive traffic and sales. Mix lighter reading with serious information.
Add Pinterest-worthy images and the kind of information people like to save and refer back to.
Remember, the two sources of information consumers find most trustworthy are brand websites and customer reviews. Add your authoritative knowledge and inside access, and your brand blog can add value for customers — and drive traffic to your product pages.
Leave a Reply