Anna Kilimnichenko: agents of influence for brands

A conference for bloggers was held at the Mir Detstva exhibition for the first time. Anna Kilimnichenko, the founder of OLYMPX Advertising Agency for Social Media Promotion, told about effective ways to establish cooperation with bloggers.

We took part in the Mir Detstva supporting programme for the first time and we discovered that this issue is very much in demand in the children’s goods industry. Bloggers, influencers, and agents of influence ... They can be called various names. However, with the help of this powerful tool you can build brand reputation, bring new products to the market, announce it successfully, increase recognition and stimulate sales. Bloggers are already ahead of traditional media in influencing the audience. Many brands allocate significant budgets to this type of promotion although sometimes they cannot see the effect of this work. Why?

Before starting brand promotion, you have to make up a brand value map, understand what business tasks you will solve with the help of the social media communities, thoroughly prescribe the avatars of the target group, and build a comprehensive strategy of building a community focused on your brand. Only this approach will attract the bloggers whose audience will “live and breathe the same air” with your brand or product.

There are many examples of successful collaboration with bloggers in the children’s goods segment. At the conference, we presented only one case shared by Svetlana Lebedeva, Kudashka^® Brand Manager, “We fully trust the manner of presenting information to subscribers from the bloggers that we selected. Therefore, we strive for the most endemic and adapted publications, followed by a positive reaction to the product, brand, and the blogger in general. That is why it is so important to have the values of the brand / product and of the blogger coincide.”

According to the response of the conference participants, this experience turned out to be useful for them. In addition, we talked about several important technical points necessary to work with bloggers: to consider coverage, engagement, and a growing number of likes and comments. Today, a huge number of programs can show that some blog is very successful, while in fact it has low quality and almost no audience.

Choosing bloggers to support a brand / product is no less painstaking process than choosing a promotion agency. Our experience shows that only a scrupulous and thorough assessment and personal acquaintance with the blogger allows you to find those who in the future will become the “voice of the brand”. Neither dry statistics nor automatic aggregators will help you find exactly that loyal, targeted audience with a positive feedback. After all, emotions are much deeper than automated processes.