September 2/9 2013; Volume 27/number 10
During the spring portion of its License to Spill tour, Mohawk partnered with 40 bloggers to bring a third-party voice to the experience as well as a personal review about SmartStrand carpet.Bloggers are becoming increasingly influential in today’s ever-evolving digital marketing space. As an ongoing conversation platform that shares the thoughts, creativity and experiences of everyday people, bloggers are able to give others a view of their worlds in an uncensored, realistic way. “More and more people are turning to bloggers when it comes to finding out information on everything from restaurant experiences to new products,” said Elise Demboski, Mohawk’s vice president of creative services. “We knew we needed to form a relationship with bloggers so they could provide our potential consumers with a view of our products in a more organic and trusted way.”
During the spring portion of its License to Spill tour, Mohawk partnered with 40 bloggers around the country to bring an authentic, third-party voice to the experience as well as a personal, targeted and real-life review about the company’s SmartStrand products. Already leaders in their own communities, the bloggers offered credibility to the campaign and validation of SmartStrand’s cleanability as they posted about their experience at each respective License to Spill stop. The posts and supporting social media stirred a genuine conversation around Mohawk’s SmartStrand product, which will live online for other potential customers to view.
“The bloggers are creating an invaluable platform for Mohawk and our retailers by sharing personal experiences with our brand with their loyal followers,” Demboski said. “The blogger component of the License to Spill tour positioned SmartStrand as top of mind to another sector of targeted consumers that we otherwise might not have reached.”
During the event, bloggers were invited to tweet and post on Facebook and Instagram about their experiences, the reactions of the attendees and more. Additionally, Mohawk gave each blogger SmartStrand samples to take home and test with their own families and review.
And while the company’s blogger outreach is ramped up during the License to Spill tour, it is an ever-growing initiative that will continue to be a top priority. By partnering with bloggers who influence highly engaged communities, blogger relations provide a perfect opportunity for retailers to monitor the conversation and jump in to direct followers to their stores. By outranking competitors in online search, Mohawk is able to push more business to its local retailers.
“Our retailers benefit from Mohawk’s blogger exposure,” Demboski said. “By showing up at the top of a search, we are able to make a splash in the market by providing consumers with product recognition as well as confidence in our products and retailers.”
Mohawk is also keeping up with the growing blog space by bringing two blogs of its own to the market. The Mohawk Flooring Blog, housed on mohawkflooring.com, features information from designers Tanyia Nayak and Chip Wade as well as reviews from customers, ways to find out what type of flooring is best for your customer’s home and how to care for the flooring in order to make it last. Mohawk also engages consumers in a non-branded, lifestyle blog, atcreativehome.com, which shares ideas, tips and how-tos from leading home and lifestyle bloggers.
Nicole Beachum of the website Social Media Today said not only does blogging provide credibility for your audience, but it also helps keep your company on top of a Google search. “In today’s Internet-based society, your business has to have a powerful online presence in order to stand out among your competitors. There is not a better way to add relevant content to your website on a regular basis than to utilize a blog. If you do not want to call it a blog, you can call it a ‘learning center’ or any other catchphrase you want to categorize the frequent posts to your website. But at the end of the day they are blogs, and these blogs are powerful.”