How Content for Home Appliance Brands Can Put the Spin on Engaging Users

Content is the platform by which manufacturers can tell their stories, answer consumer questions, and demonstrate their products to potential buyers. It presents multiple opportunities across media for companies to interact with consumers (and potential customers) and can provide a space for customers to interact with each other in the social space. This collaboration in turn expands a company’s online presence, polishes its reputation, and boosts sales. All the better when content is part of an integrated marketing mix, as with home appliance manufacturer Whirlpool.

Home appliance manufacturers have ample opportunities and formats to engage target consumers through content. For example, rather than just talk about machine features, Whirlpool has used storytelling to convey the benefits of its products. This content (through TV spots, website content and print advertising) draws in consumers with stories that relate to their concerns.

Print ads and television commercials can drive users to social media and websites, where niche marketing messages can live. Online videos that tell relatable stories easily demonstrate product uses and features (and are easy to share with other users). In the case of home appliances, these can be about dishwashers, washers and dryers, ovens and cooking ranges. This video content can be written to address specific niche markets (home chefs who want to know how the cooktop will help them look like Food Network stars, teenagers concerned about how their jeans will wash). Microsites on the brand’s parent website can continue the conversation with more videos, FAQs, and case studies.

Touting product benefits without overtly promoting product is a vital part of a successful content marketing effort. This makes social media an excellent place to talk directly to consumers via targeted informational posts that create an open online community. For example, consumers can tweet questions about how to use a product or post something to a company’s Facebook page, giving the brand an opportunity to “talk” to potential customers and become a trusted resource for them.

Engaging case studies/product usage stories can make for great social media fodder, along with links to the product website and its additional content. In Whirlpool’s case, its Institute of Fabric Science enables consumers to ask for help with issues related to the company’s appliances but not necessarily about the actual products. Questions about how to wash or dry something—unrelated to Whirlpool’s products—are answered by corporate representatives and this content in turn positions the company as a trusted brand.

If you market home appliance brands, think about how content can be used to engage your target audience. Videos for product demos, FAQ sheets, online forums for product discussions, social sharing of appliance “wins” from happy consumers are all ways that content puts a positive spin on customer engagement. 

Images courtesy of WikiMedia Commons

Getting to Know You: How Content Fosters Stronger Relationships Inside and Outside a Company

 As the adage goes, people do business with people they know, like and trust. Business professionals network, they join trade associations, and get referrals from clients and colleagues. But how can companies build that “know, like and trust” factor between corporate and workforce, employee-to-employee, and between employees and customers? 

By sharing content.

1 - Get them to know. Content that is relevant and gets employees talking to each other and to customers helps build relationships around common goals. Providing a platform for them to become familiar with each other by sharing common ideas (or sharing disparate views of a shared conversation) is the great equalizer that draws people together.

Expert byline articles are great tools for this. Sales people can send an email to the consumer with helpful tips and a link to an article about a shared topic of interest (fashion tips for fall, color trends for spring, what not to wear), or a manager can share an article related to a specific department or product and get employees talking about it--together.

2 - Get them to like. Sharing informative, educational, and practical content with customers and between employees creates brand buzz and develops a corps of brand ambassadors from inside and outside the company.

That’s because content allows for a productive exchange of feedback. Whether it’s a survey or an article that encourages comments, brands can use the feedback that is elicited to develop customer loyalty programs, employee recognition programs and other activities that engage everyone on both sides of the content (and corporate) fence.

A few years ago, an article in Social Media Today stated that, “Engage your internal audience just as you do your external one, and you’ll find your workers are much better equipped to talk the company talk.” I submit that this remains true today. Sure, technology changes all the time but some basic tenets will always apply.

3 - Get them to trust. In the customer service realm, content provides an avenue for employees to converse with customers that trust because the information being shared is content that customers are interested in. In the human resources area, content can be used to showcase a great job performed by an employee or team through a case study or results of a survey.

• Content fosters collaboration -- Content is ready-made to get the conversation started. It brings employees and their customers together over common ground; collaboration tools, if employed by your company, keep the conversation going.

• Content fosters social learning -- Users are reading the articles or training materials—and in so doing, they are learning and sharing information.

• Content aligns users around brand goals -- Share blog posts and newsletter content that promotes a brand with employees and/or customers; encourage them to comment and exchange opinions (moderated, of course) about the shared content.
  

• Content creates data -- By curating shared content generated by employees—blogs, social posts, newsletters—a company can develop a content database that can help brands provide better service or expand their product lines.

Summary:

Sharing meaningful content internally (with your workforce or between employees) as well as externally (employees “talking” to customers) creates a more social business by providing the bridge that pulls together the workforce, connects consumers with employees, and gets users to know, like and trust each other as well as the brand.