Online behaviour is shifting from static to interactive. Because of this, organizations need to be even more alert to keep their customers satisfied. Companies need to be there for their customers and feel like friends, or atleast more humane. Many organizations today are using content marketing on their blogs, trying to attract and engage customers. This thesis aims at finding out how exactly companies are trying to engage their customers on their blogs and what aspects of parasocial interaction can be recognized in these blogs.

An attempt to answer these questions is made by linking the concepts of content marketing, engagement and parasocial interaction. A content analysis was made on the corporate blogs of five different mobile operators. Sports related content was examined in order to find out how the companies were trying to engage their customers.

The thesis presents four different ways the companies are trying to engage their customers, and argues that many of the aspects of engagement and parasocial interaction were indeed intertwined.

The findings suggest that different kinds of call to actions in both text and on the platform were used for engagement as well as fading the brand from the text, personifying the writer and addressing the reader directly.

The thesis does not take any stance on whether these ways of engaging are succesful or not, but merely presents what and how companies are trying to do it. A deeper study on the effects of content marketing in corporate blogs is required to better understand the effects of engaging behaviour.

This thesis serves as a good starting point for studies in the field, since parasocial interaction has not yet been much studied from the viewpoint of corporate blogs. It will also be of value for companies when planning their social media interaction processess.