5 Big Business Blog Fears

There are a million reasons why you don't have a blog - or haven't kept it up, or hate posting.  Even when you know that good business blogs increase Web site traffic and customer acquisition.  What are your reasons?

1. What if they don't like me (and say bad things on my blog)?


Opening yourself up for negative feedback can be scary, unpleasant and downright maddening.  However, in a study by Forrester Research (reported here by AdWeek), only 16% of Internet users trusted the content of corporate blogs.  Ouch!

...we'ved moved! To read the rest of this article, here's the direct link at Fine Point Writing.

Statistics: How blogs improve your business

Today, various bloggers are writing on the topic, "Are bloggers as important as bloggers think they are?"  One of my favorite bloggers, Paul Anater of Kitchen and Residential Design wrote a great post on the subject.  He did a much better job than I could do, so you should read his post if you want a thoughtful answer to the question.  He's also someone who has built a solid offline business based on the success of his blog.


The part of his post that was most relevant to business blogs was the statistic he posted about blog readers, which he got from Technorati and media agency Universal McCann.: 77 percent of Internet users read blogs. That is huge! In North America, that means more than 205 million people are reading blogs.


How do I get some of those millions over to my business blog?


Targeting happens by creating content that's relevant to your potential audience.  Here are some statistics about how business blogs have improved leads, sales and Web site views.  All data is from hubspot.com.

• Frequent blog posting improves the chances of acquiring a customer.  In a survey by Hubspot.com, 100% of businesses that blogged multiple times a day got at least one customer directly from someone reading the blog.  Companies that didn't blog often received fewer customers -- only 13% of businesses that blogged less than monthly acquired new prospects.

• Blogging improves businesses' rankings in Web searches. Companies that blog have 434% more idexed pages than companies that don't.

• More people visit business Web sites that have blogs. In a survey of more than 1,500 small businesses, companies that blogged had 55% more visitors than companies that didn't.

Making decisions from the data

Obviously, businesses need to weigh whether the cost of running a blog is more effective than other costs in the marketing budget.  There's more statistics on hubspot.com that demonstrate how inbound marketing efforts are much more cost-effective than outbound.  But then again, if you have blog five times a day and no one reads it, that's also pretty ineffective.  To make your blog relevant, it needs to have:

• Keywords that allow your target to find you
• Content that keeps your customer there
• A call to action: products or services that solve your customers' issues - the reason they were searching the Web in the first place!

SEO tips for bloggers

Just learned a ton about SEO in a short time by attending a video conference for International Freelancer's Day.  I can see I've got a ways to go since I'm not quite a corporate blog writer.  I'm not going to rehash the seminar -- you can find a lot better tips on SEO and keyword research in a million more places - I am really liking Copyblogger (Brian Clark did the presentation).  I'm pretty sure the presentation is archived there, or just download the materials from Copyblogger.

Not sure if I'm ready to jump into a subscription to a keyword research service yet, but maybe my company will for its blog.   This could be a cool experiment.

Does anyone have a keyword research service they like?  Any free ones you can just try out?

Boring blog posts can be good for business

This post from Jason Falls at Social Media Explorer features a straightforward case study about how a corporate blog for Aprilaire, a company that makes home humidifier equipment, increased traffic to the site by 1,000 percent! The most interesting thing about the blog's success is the true boring-ness of the content (sorry Aprilaire!). It looks like this:

Aprilaire Blog

The blog is just a Q&A between customers and Aprilaire customer service.  However boring it may to me, it's not boring at all to potential customers. It's actually a pretty brilliant strategy to attract potential customers who are considering home humidifiers and are searching Google with keywords and questions. Falls says that the analytics reflect this, with 80% of new visitors finding the site through searches. Barely any comments on the posts, no huge amount of dialog and followers, but is it generating Web site traffic? Definitely.

Cool illustration that boring content can work if the keywords are right.  The tougher part: knowing what keywords customers are using to search for your product.