For an average person, a blog is just a space to share their experience, an opinion, photos, videos and so on. However, five die-hard bloggers from Chennai have taken blogging to the next level by starting IndiBlogger.in. IndiBlogger.in is a huge congregation of over 27,000 Indian bloggers which is now helping brands to communicate with their customers in an entirely different way.
According to Vineet Rajan, who is one among the directors who conceived the site, IndiBlogger.in had begun merely to serve as a directory so that bloggers could submit their blogs. However, currently the IndiBlogger team gets around 70 requests from blogging aspirants each day. Also, IndiBlogger helps brands to communicate with their customers through blogs.
Bloggers and brands
IndiBlogger serves like a social network meant for bloggers from India. The site has kept on including features based on the demands of its users in the discussion forums. For instance, IndiVine is the site’s chatting application and Indi-Rank is, as the name suggests, a ranking algorithm which ranks the bloggers in India. The site allows its users to track other bloggers’ activity through activity feeds and gives exclusive dashboards for the bloggers as well.
IndiBlogger’s revenue is obtained by marketing brands through blogs. IndiBogger utilizes its blogs in order to help the brands in building trust as well as credibility. Rajan said that blogging helps achieve this purpose much better than other online media.
Rajan cites the statistics shown by the Advertising Survey conducted by Neilson Global Trust in 2012. According to the survey, less than one-third of all the internet users trust advertisements. However, a whopping 92% seemed to have faith in peer as well as word-of mouth recommendations.
IndiBlogger kick-started its brand engagement services beginning with Microsoft which happened through a Blogger meet back in 2007. Ever since then, around 60 such congregations have been organized by IndiBlogger along with conducting over 50 contests. IndiBlogger helps brands that cover sectors such as travel and aviation, retailing, consumer goods and so on. In November 2011, Surf Excel of Hindustan Unilever Ltd. engaged with women bloggers through IndiBlogger with the help of a contest named ‘Surf Excel Matic #GetSmart’.
Some of the other brands which engaged with consumers via IndiBlogger are Cleartrip, Samsung, Castrol, Tata Docomo and Pepsi.
