Research published today by HubSpot suggests that blog entries with big brand names in the title are more likely to be read than those without.
The survey used HubSpot’s own data, based on 100 articles, published over 50 days, around 20 of which named big brands. On average, these blog posts performed 60% better than their more generic counterparts.
It also emerged that articles with the word ‘Google’ in the title received on average 50% more page views.
Oddly though, blog entries with brand names in the title were less likely to receive inbound links, and those containing the word ‘Google’ were even likely to attract inbound links, but more likely to attract comments.
So why are articles with brand names in the title more likely to be read? Well, for one thing, we’re all familiar with the big brands and we’re therefore more likely to connect with them. i.e. Which are you more likely to read…
“Coca Cola buys Pepsi”
or
“Smith Peters Ltd. buys Acme Inc.”?
Secondly, articles containing brand names, and particularly big brand names, are more likely to be topical news, since the media (especially trade media) relies on press releases and business news.
And topical articles are also more likely to be distributed – either by email, social media, social bookmarking, hyperlink embedding, comment on other blogs or offline referral.
Of course, these are the fundamental principles of any marketing – familiarity and relevance. The takehome message is of course, if you’re involved with a big brand, name it in the title of your blog post or webpage. We might not all be able to list Coca Cola, Apple or Telmex* amongst our clients, but many of us do work with companies well known in their own fields. Therefore…
“Honda and Peugeot sign deals with Mendip Media”
is a far more powerful title than…
“Honda and Peugeot sign deals with Bristol modern communications agency”
No, I’m just kidding. You know what I mean!