Business blogging more than pays for itself according to a study carried out by Backbone Media – a Boston based company specialising in integrated search engine marketing and website design strategies for Business to Business companies. The survey includes case studies of blogs run by IBM, Microsoft, Maytag, iUpload, and Macromedia.
The study, available online in html format and pdf format, discovered that corporate blogs are living up to all the hype. Corporate blogs are giving established corporations and obscure brands the ability to connect with their audiences on a personal level, build trust, collect valuable feedback and foster strengthened relationships while and at the same time benefiting in ways that are tangible to the sales and marketing side of the business
Backbone Media President Stephen Turcotte remarked on the survey,
Looking at this from the perspective of an Internet marketer, there are obvious SEO benefits to publishing relevant content that is search engine friendly and getting more backlinks. However, a successful blog can do so much more. It can build a better company.
John Cass, Backbone Media’s Director of Internet Marketing Strategies, commented:
Every company is at a different stage in their blogging efforts, some are dipping their toe into blogging and getting good results, in terms of higher search engine rankings and thought leadership, while others have changed their whole product development process to make their company as open and transparent to customers as possible. The benefits of blogging are many, but it seems that to build and achieve the best results using blogs, a company must cross a cultural chasm that turns customers into brand evangelists.
The interesting thing about this concept is that if you do build a business blog and engage your customers, it is entirely possible to turn your clients into “brand evangelists” as John Cass says and there are few more powerful sales reps than satisfied customers!
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Comepletely off topic Tom, but how do you decide what to blog and what not to? I’ve started a blog-type-thing a few times over the last 2/3 years and kept it private, and always lost interest / focus on what I was doing, never being able to decide on what should be included and what not. My main reason behind beginning such things was reading Caolan McNamaras (the guy who first introduced me to Linux – way back in the first days of the WANG lab in UL) homepage, and much more recently browsing sites such as Keith Gaughans (go on K, congratulate yourself) and Kae Verens blog – guys who have similar interests (most likely) and skills (well certainly similar) such as myself. Yet both also seem to have not just written stuff to help others (I’m far too guilty of programming/helping but never releasing), but developed full scale apps or APIs or whatever you want to call it in this day and age. In some ways I am jealous of them in this regard. I attribute this failure (both blog-like sharing of relatively unknown information / thoughts AND programming for the benefit of the public) most likely to the burn-out I experienced 2 or so years ago (and have yet to fully recover from – though meeting Jon Hanna in person and going for pints / discussion helped a lot). I know Keith reads here now and then – Kae perhaps not; have you guys experienced any form of burn-out? I’ve meandered quite a bit now, and my train of thought seems to have got a bit lost, but um, any further comments on this from anyone would be appreciated
That is an excellent question Lee and one to which there is no easy answer!
Personally, I blog stories I have come across which I have found interesting (if they are IT related!). Also, I am blogging more about the advantages to businesses of blogging because they are two areas of interest to me and it is interesting to see how they intersect (and I hope to pick up a little business from consulting in this area!). Finally, I also blog solutions to problems I have had so my blog can function as a knowledgebase for me (the fact that this helps others with similar problems is a nice side benefit).
Hope this helps,
Tom
You have to blog something you are absolutely passionately interested in. For most people, this tends to be what they had for breakfast or what kind of igneous rock they are. But we aren’t talking about them.
I blog primarily about homeland stupidity because it pisses me off and there’s just so much of it. But you’ll also find Linux howtos and news from time to time as well, and they account for a good third of my traffic.
> You have to blog something you are absolutely passionately interested in.
Not always. I often blog about topics which interests me at an intellectual level. Passion, I am afraid, has nothing to do with it.
I’m not a (true) blogger so I should probably keep my mouth shut, but I never do… I have a blog but I keep it more as a personal knowledge base, and as tom says, if it helps others from time to time, great. I pity anyone who visits regularly!
Thing is though – you have to want to have a blog. I reckon it’s as simple as that. The same way that we all know people who kept a diary when we were younger (don’t we?)… I could never keep a diary. I bought one from time to time and the first page would be written in. After that – blank.
I keep the blog-run BifSniff site updated regularly – every week I draw the cartoon for Bif and upload it through blogger. But it’s because I enjoy drawing the cartoon. If I enjoyed writing about more things more often I’d make a great blogger…!
So, I guess it’s a matter of wanting to do it. After that, there’s any range of ways you could decide how to filter what you write about… you could pick just one subject and write about that. Or you could decide to blog a minimum of once a day/week on any subject. The first thing of interest that pops into your head, blog about it. Then leave all the other things, even if they seem more interesting. Or you could blog about whatever subject Keith or Tom has picked on any given day OR how about this – kill two birds with one stone- create a random-blog-post-subject-generator app, release it to the public and then use it to dictate what you blog about!
Anyway, that’s my facile contribution.
No, hostyle, I never read this blog
To keep on the apparent topic of this post, I am not aware of any increase of business that my company has gotten, caused by my blogging, but I do believe that it is beneficial to my own standing as an “expert” (or at least, “experienced worker”) in my own fields to share what I have learned, and try to push things further.
My reason for blogging? I haven’t a clue… I guess I think of it as mainly note-keeping – I like to write things down that I am annoyed about or that I find useful, in the hope that other people will respond to those thoughts.
A plus to blogging your thoughts, is that others may take those thoughts and run with them. It was pointed out that I sometimes release full applications or widgets – I think it’s important to note that in most cases, those code snippets are then polished and enhanced by other people – Open Source in action!
Anyway – I don’t really consider myself to be a blogger – I stick to relatively few fields of interest in my writing, and I don’t think my writing is really clear enough for others to read.
Kae,
thanks for stopping by – maybe you’ll become a regular reader and then I’ll have 3!
If you are not seeing any increase in business caused by your blogging, can I posit that this might be due to the fact that your blog is on your own domain, not your company’s domain and you don’t mention your company very often in your posts.
I suspect that if your blog was on the company domain, then this would add to your company’s credibility and at least some of that would convert to sales.
“Not always. I often blog about topics which interests me at an intellectual level. Passion, I am afraid, has nothing to do with it.”
This is/was my exact problem, there is too much that interests me out there, and I obviously can’t blog / link to it all. I’m merely a minion where I work, so any blog I did to that effect would not really reflect at all on the company. I don’t have the time on a daily basis to even follow up on all the interesting snippets and articles I come across – so they get skipped (or bookmarked and usually never seen again). And I’m unable to narrow it down one single topic that I’d like to concentrate on … oh well.
You have to ask yourself first Lee – why do I want to blog? Only when you answer this to your own satisfaction will you be able to focus your blogging.
For instance, you say:
and
So there seems to be two differing reasons for blogging currently going on with you – one company related and the other personal.
Finally, you say:
What you could always do is blog these items instead of bookmarking them as a knowledgebase for yourself and return to them when you have a spare minute!
Thanks Tom. I kinda decided that myself last night when I couldn’t sleep
I need somewhere to keep track of the things that I always loose – ideas, links, thoughts, opinions, script snippets, etc. I’ve been working on a site design / architecture in my free moments today and will carry on over the weekend – and will then choose a blogging engine; WordPress looks good enough for now at least.
Great,
happy to have helped in some small way Lee – God knows you have helped loads of people over on the Open list
Tom,
It really is all about the content strategy for the blog. As we discovered in the case studies if companies focus their blog content strategy on their customer’s ideas, they gain even more opportunities and benefits from business blogging.
What’s really interesting to me is why blogging is effective. David Weinberger of the Berkman Center for Society and the Internet makes the point very well, he explains how over the last ten years with the web customers now have the ability to connect with their fellow customers and compare positive and negative comments about companies and products. It’s that new ability for customers to self publish and create their own online customer a community that is changing our economy to the new blogging economy.
John
That’s a fascinating outcome John – it makes sense, really, if you think about it but isn’t necessarily intuitive.
That’s a lot of it John, definitely, but blogging is effective for so many other reasons – the seo benefits, for instance. People can now publish and be found – that appeals enormously to people’s ego!
RSS also plays a huge part in blogs being found – As I mentioned before, there’s a whole new internet paradigm occurring John, and it is powered by RSS – and it is Browse, Search, Subscribe. This is the new Internet.
I’m just starting a business blog myself, but for an online counselling service, which is slightly different I suppose. The problem I find is that a) – competitors don’t want to link to you, b) – casual bloggers aren’t that interested in the content. But the most positive thing is, my blog posts now appear top ten in the SERPs. That’s after only six weeks of twice/week posting, so I’m pleased with the results.
Hi Guys,
I put up my first blog page today! Blogging seems to be another way of communicating with people and handing helpful information to them especially from a web developer point of view.
Is there a big blog community in Cork?
Kind Regards
Corkweb.net