By Naomi Owusu, co-founder and CEO, Tickaroo

Gaining and retaining customer trust is a fundamental requirement for most businesses. Its importance should not be underrated. Trust plays a pivotal role in loyalty, positive word of mouth, and increased revenue. However, with public scepticism at an all-time high, achieving trust through media and marketing is becoming increasingly difficult.

Connection is critical to achieving trust with target audiences but must stem from authentic interactions and transparency. Authenticity is fundamental to acquisition marketing to gain new clients, but it’s also central to retaining customers in ongoing interactions. For marketers, this means deep listening, providing potential and existing clients with numerous avenues to share their challenges, and responding with relatable and tailored content that engages them on the issues that matter. But how can this pinnacle of customer engagement be achieved?

From one-way to audience-first communications Publishers have been tackling this same question for several years now. Once upon a time, the media represented a purely ‘broadcast’, top-down, or one-way proposition, with news agendas dictated by publishers and editors. In the face of declining trust in the media and growing news avoidance and fatigue, however, it is now vital that content proactively reflects audience needs. This means taking an ‘audience-first’ approach, which embraces deep listening and new ways of directly interacting with audiences. By doing so, publishers find out what readers or viewers want to hear about and provide transparency in reporting. The strategy invests in the authenticity of content to claw back consumer trust.

Liveblogs represent an excellent platform for publishers to engage in authentic, audience-first strategies, and they also hold relevance for marketers. For example, deep listening means setting aside agendas or judgements to pay close attention to the audience’s cues, understand their perspective, and deliver appropriate content in response. It means providing audiences with a voice through interactive comment functions and polls. Deep listening goes hand in hand with direct interaction to allow the reader to communicate their views and feel engaged in a multi-way conversation with the brand and other audience members. This has worked well for titles such as Stuff, as evidenced by their Taylor Swift ticket frenzy liveblog.

Media houses achieve transparency by sharing ‘behind the scenes’ or social media-style content to reflect the personalities behind a story or brand. We see many young journalists creating TikTok and influencer-style videos to tell stories in short snippets, with their personalities playing a significant role in how viewers consume content. No doubt, showing personality goes a long way in building trust relationships with audiences, as demonstrated so well by DER SPIEGEL’s reporters in their coverage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023. They expressed personal opinions, reacted with emojis, and cracked jokes – all in a lively dialogue with each other via the liveblog for the tournament. Indeed, with their digestible, bite-size format, multimedia style, interactive capabilities and social media-esque user experience, liveblogs have increasingly become an established means of creating content

that users view as authentic. While liveblog use cases will be different in marketing compared to the publishing world, the format’s flexibility also allows marketers to be creative and find the best way to use this powerful tool to meet their and their audiences’ needs.

Building a narrative in line with consumption preferences Marketers can use these same liveblog tools and techniques to nurture their clients by initiating interactive, two-way dialogue to ensure they don’t fall back on one-size-fits-all blanket messaging. This can create a more holistic brand picture and narrative that builds authenticity and trust with current and prospective customers.

From company liveblogs for internal communication to event liveblogs to connect with leads or as a consumer-facing campaign platform, liveblogs can tell a story, ensure relevance and drive engagement. The Challenge Family live race tracker provides a great example of a brand using a live blog to keep audiences up to date on race results, while also helping to build profiles for the athletes involved. While live blogs are often associated with real-time updates, the format can take various paths to help paint the broader picture and keep audiences tuned in for more. For instance, RTL’s live blog on the German equivalent of ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’, delivers greater context on the content participants and background on the show, building deeper connections with viewers. However, these wider contextual elements often go hand-in-glove with live updates (such as what’s happening in the Jungle) to bring target audiences along on the brand journey.

Aligning with customer needs Let’s consider that consumers are exposed to almost 10,000 adverts a day. In this context, it’s easy to see why marketing content must be closely aligned with target consumers’ needs and expectations to maintain a competitive edge. Moreover, with research pointing to shortening attention spans, swift, efficient, and easy-to-consume content delivery is evolving into a strategic advantage.

Liveblogs offer a format that caters to these needs. By opening up new channels to engage with various stakeholders in these digestible formats, brands can be confident that they are creating content that directly responds to the wants, needs and challenges of their target market. Moreover, this content can be recycled and repurposed by adjusting the format and channel for maximum efficiency, taking advantage of the multimedia options available to communicate via social media style updates, video, imagery and much more. Adding live polls, Q&As with experts in a related field, and comment functionality brings vital audience participation, establishing an authentic ‘voice’ of the brand and genuine two-way interaction. 

The hallmark of brand authenticity lies in forming deep connections and understanding with audiences, ensuring that customers feel seen and heard. When evaluating a brand’s recognition, authenticity is one of the most precious metrics, overtaking other performance indicators like reach and views. By harnessing the power of live blogs, brands can replicate the strides made by publishers to rebuild trust in the content they’re creating and tell a genuine story that enables customer acquisition and loyalty.