Chief Marketer magazine just published an article predicting the hottest trends in brand marketing for 2007 . (I blogged it on my Engagement Principles marketing blog.)

The #1 trend? The growth of Engagement Marketing. That’s great news for smart, value-added copywriters.

What’s engagement marketing? The current definition is “…turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.”

It’s an awkward way to describe engaging with customers rather than pummelling them with traditional sales techniques.

An excellent small-business example is Tim Jackson’s Masiguy blog. It engages road cyclists in the day-to-day life of a true cycling geek working at Masi bicycles.

Little product information. No features. No benefits. Just connection.

Does engagement work? It’s credited with helping double the company’s sales each of the last two years.

Why Is That Good For Writers?

While engagement marketing takes many forms, small and medium sized business will likely test the waters with a blog. And those blogs will need content.

Which is where you come in.

The strongest engagement occurs when a company demonstrates that its passions align with those of their customers. So a bike company blog would be written by a cyclist.

And a book publisher’s blog would be written by an avid reader.

What do you love to do? Where does your expertise and passion lie?

Make Your Passions Pay.

Here’s a plan: Pick a dozen companies you want to work for - companies whose products and services are near and dear to your heart.

Contact them, get to their marketing director, and ask if they’re planning a blog. If not, use the information you find here, on The Engagement Principles and elsewhere on the Internet to pitch them one.

Another option is to locate PR firms serving markets that interest you (PR firms often specialize).

It’s likely that PR firms will be among the first to offer blogs to their clients. Yet they won’t have the bandwidth to populate them with content.

Engagement marketing requires a steady of flow of relevant, passionate content. Unlike so many other marketing projects, blogs generate steady revenues for copywriters willing to make the commitment.

I’ll post more on this in the near future.

In the meantime, build your engagement marketing credentials. It’s a part of the industry destined to grow quickly. And it represents the kind of better-paying, long-term projects that boost your revenues and smooth out your revenue highs and lows.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

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