If you blog, you know that it's good for your business.
But how -- and how much?
To answer to those questions, I looked at data from 1,531 HubSpot customers (mostly small- and medium-sized businesses). 795 of the businesses in my sample blogged, 736 didn't.
The data was crystal clear: Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has:
Take a look for yourself in the graphs below:
Why are website visitors important? Because more visitors mean more people to convert to leads and sales.
Why are inbound links important? Because they signal authority to search engines, thus increasing your chances of getting found in those search engines.
Why are indexed pages important? The more pages you have on your site, the more chances you have of getting found in search engines.
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The average number of blog posts in a 24-hour period is 900,000. This means that every hour your blog competes with about 37,500 other blogs. How do you stand out in this flooded market?
This is what web developer Jamon Holmgren wondered on an InboundMarketing.com forum. He has to market his skills in an industry that's extensively covered on the Web. "What can I add to the conversation that a better programmer or graphic designer or SEO professional hasn't already covered?" he asked.
The challenge of blogging in a flooded market is increasing even for less known-on-the-web industries. But it shouldn't mean failure for your blogging efforts. Here are four ways to make your blog stand out from the rest:
Build Local Relationships
Your specific geography is what distinguishes you from many industry bloggers. So, focus on building relationships with local online leaders. Build a reputation in your local newspaper's blog and other smaller community blogs.
This will make you a trusted thought leader in you locality and earn you high SEO authority. "The more you can build relationships and trust with the online leaders in your community, the more traffic you'll get on your site, and the more people you'll be able to convert to leads and sales," wrote Rick Burnes.
Don't Blog to Self Promote
If you blog about your product or services, now is the time to stop. Find out what your target audience is really interested in and pursue those topics. Reputable bloggers don't self-promote but respond to the community's needs.
"Providing accurate, useful information that informs in a non-self-promoting manner gains credibility," wrote in the forum Greg Sweval. "It may take a little longer to build the buzz but once the momentum gets rolling it has exponential effects," he suggested.
What Gets You Passionate?
Blog about the aspects of your business that get you passionate. "Be yourself and blog about the things that excite and interest you (without sounding like a commercial, of course) and you'll be fine," wrote Steve Early.
When you write with passion and offer real value, you will most likely attract a big audience. Above all, blogs are for humans who are curious and seeking information presented in unique ways. The goal is to make your readers as passionate about your subject as you are.
Be Authentic
You will stand out from the noise and the crowd of bloggers if you are truly authentic. Your open-mindedness and transparency can earn you great credibility in the blogosphere. In addition, they will add a more personal element to your writing style. Be authentic and let your readers see you clearly and identify with your message.
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Since we're launching Blog Grader over at blog.grader.com this morning, today on this blog I'm sharing our report card.
So how we doin?
Right now we get a B+ -- an 89 out of 100.
I
think that's pretty good, especially considering that we're working
within the constraints of a company blog. Of course, there's a lot of
work to do.
To get a sense of exactly where that work needs to be
done -- and to give you a full status report on the blog -- I put our
grades in the context of some of the blogs we read regularly and admire:
Site
| Blog Grade | Traffic Rank
| Page Rank
| Indexed Pages
| Inbound Links
|
|
sethgodin.typepad.com
| 92
| 8,410
| 7 | 4,320
| 1,840,142
|
|
www.chrisbrogan.com
| 91 | 19,793
| 6
| 3,720
| 420,672
|
|
www.micropersuasion.com
| 91
| 52,023
| 7 | 5,750
| 595,266
|
|
blog.hubspot.com
| 88 | 6,535
| 5
| 1,150
| 46,385
|
|
www.toprankblog.com
| 88
| 17,980
| 6
| 3,340
| 785,905
|
|
www.copyblogger.com
| 87
| 8,717
| 6
| 930
| 801,510
|
|
www.webinknow.com
| 83 | 70,786
| 6
| 934
| 131,920 |
|
What's all this tell you? And what can you learn from it so that you can benchmark your own blog?
Above all, it shows that it doesn't make sense to judge your blog by a single metric. Look at a variety of metrics, and decide which are the most important for your purposes.
Here's a rundown of each of the metrics I've included above:
- Traffic Rank is important if you're concerned with the visitors
to your site, as many advertising-funded sites are. Lower is better.
- Page Rank is a very rough assment of raw SEO power, according to Google. It's on a 1-10 scale. Higher is better.
- Indexed Pages is a measure of the volume of content visible to search engines. More is better.
- Inbound Links is a rough proxy for SEO authority (search engines use inbound links to help sort results). It's also an indication of the extent to which your blog is used as a reference. A higher number is better.
Here are a few numbers that aren't listed above, but are also important:
- Comments indicate the level of engagement on the blog. Higher is better.
- Subscriptions indicate the level of the blog's reach. More subscriptions is better.
So which one of these numbers should you be focused on most? It depends
on what your blog's goals are, but I try to keep track of all of them
for this blog. Of course, now that we have a
Blog Grade that weights
all of them, I'll be focusing more on that.
How's your report card? Which metrics are you focused on improving for your blog?
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| | Learn how to build your business blog into an inbound marketing machine.
Download the free webinar to learn how to create a thriving blog. |
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I am obsessed with blog comments. I count them and recount them. I see their number as a sign that people are genuinely interested in my content.
Comments, however, are not necessarily an objective indicator of engagement. Their number, big or small, can be misleading. But is shutting down comments a way to avoid getting misled?
Internet marketer Dan Ronken recently started an InboundMarketing.com forum discussion about whether "closing off comments until a decent amount of readership is built" is a good approach. An extensive blog without comments, he suggested, "feels less engaging."
"Leave them open," advised him forum participant Brian Rogers. "I wouldn't shut off comments as that would delay when people start commenting!" Brian wrote. Here are five other tips that emerged from the forum.
Give Readers Rights
Give your readers the rights they deserve. Readers want to know that they have certain rights even though they might not actually use them. Blogging is about expressing opinions and enabling free speech. This can be achieved only if you leave the communication channels open. As Rick Burnes
wrote, "For users, the ability to comment is far more apparent than the ratio comments/posts."
Engage Known People First
Get your friends and personal connections involved in your blog. This will create the foundations of your reading and commenting culture. In addition, it will give you valuable feedback for improvement. "If you're worried about no comments," Brian
noted, "once you get the blog going, email some of your good friends to go in there and leave some comments to spur the conversation."
Reward Loyal Readers
Reward your loyal readers by allowing them to comment on your posts and participate in your conversations. They might be a small crowd but they
are on your blog and are there to learn and interact. By not nurturing your existing relationships, you might lose your most loyal readership.
Pursue What's Authentic
Comments are important as long as they are authentic. Often times, no comments can be more authentic than lots of comments.
Anne-Marie McReynolds suggested that we should be aware of the different motives behind commenting. "Is commenting really about building authentic relationships or about SEO (i.e. backlinks)?" she
asked.
Stop Anticipating Comments
Don't blog in anticipation of the commenters' feedback. Keep your focus on what got you started on the blog post. Seth Godin
explains that expectations for responses permanently change the writing style. "Instead of writing for everyone, I find myself writing in anticipation of the commenters," he noticed.
In other words, obsessing over the number of your blog comments is like every other obsession--it leads to unproductivity.
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Soldering can't possibly have anything to do with blogging, right?
Wrong. For Indium Corporation, a supplier of soldering materials and electronics assembly equipment, blogging is now a central piece of the marketing mix.
Why? Because blogging helps Indium reach target audiences, get the company message out and -- above all -- get found via search engines and social media.
In a recent email interview, Rick Short, Indium's director of marketing, explained why blogging is so important to his company.
Q: You work at a company that supplies electronics assembly equipment. What made you want to start your first blog? Weren't you worried about a shortage of readers and topics to write about?
A: My goal was, and remains, to own the space as the "thought leader" for a wide variety of pertinent topics, technologies, etc. This, theoretically, delivers customer contacts on targeted topics-leading to increased sales, as well as insight into future opportunities (technologies, developments, etc.). It also delivers our customers a sophisticated source of support. Bottom line -- I wanted a win: win scenario.
Since the Indium Corporation has so many accomplished technologists who perform basic and applied research, as well as many individuals who are active with customer applications in the field, I knew I had the content. My real challenge was getting my staff to warm to the concept of being a blogger. This required a change in mindset, as well as a slight change in routine and responsibilities. Some perceived this "new" practice to be frivolous. After all, "writing a column" (like a journalist) seems quite unlike the traditional serious and deeply-involved creation of a "white paper" - it doesn't feel right to some scientists. Once they realized how this type of sharing is valuable, they started coming around.
Q: As the director of marketing communications at the Indium Corporation you manage trade exhibitions and blogs (among other things). Which channel is more efficient for you? Why?
First we need to know the units that you use to measure efficiency. To me it involves things like time, money, utilization rates, and (most importantly) contact generation. So, in terms of things like time/contact, money/contact, and "times used" (how many times we can put one piece of information out to the market), blogging and related social media is, by far, the most efficient activity.
That said, I don't have to select only one way to go to market, so I use a variety of activities to earn our target audience's respect, trust, and favor.
Q: Indium has 10 employees blogging about topics varying from electronics assembly and technology to interface materials and semiconductor packaging. How do you justify so much company time devoted to blogging?
A: Another way I've heard the same sentiments goes something like this, "I don't have time to do that silly stuff, I've got an experiment to finish (or a white paper to complete)." That was the voice of many of my bloggers at one time or another. Many people see blogging as an activity that takes precious time away from their "important" work.
My tactic is to reduce the process down to a very simple form, an inarguable form. In the case of my staff, it almost has to be a mathematical equation. Remember, my staff, and our customers, are extremely sophisticated, well-educated, and technologically astute. They seek and value data and logic, not warm fuzzies.
So, I break it down to this: products and technology generate content (meaningful information) which generates (customer) contact which generates profitable sales. Then, I demonstrate how easily my staff's hard-earned and extremely-valued content is purveyed via blogging (and other social media). Next, I use some anecdotes relating to the effect of delivering a white paper at a technology symposium, or having it printed in a trade journal versus having online, syndicated, and searchable for years and years.
Eventually, these smart people see that blogging thrusts them and their content into the spotlight in a long-term, efficient manner. They quickly get it.
Q: Which one of the Indium's blogs have you found to be the most successful and why do you think that is the case?
A: Each blog is a success since they each have different target audiences and expectations. I can't simply declare that, because blog "A" generates more leads than blog "B" it is better. We need to consider the population of the target audience, as well as other factors. We also need to consider the resources needed to keep the blog vibrant.
Q: Your company has facilities in China, Singapore, South Korea, the U.K. and Italy. How do you think your blogging and vlogging generate international leads?
A: In many ways, technology is "global." Sure, language matters, and barriers exist. We blog in Chinese as well as English. We wish we were blogging in many other languages. We have resource constraints and we make the best of them.
As usual, we seek to overcome cultural and language barriers via the use of numbers, tables, charts, graphs, and videos. We also seek to tap into emotions and experiences. We may be geeks here, but we're people. Our highly-technical audience has a tremendous sense of passion and of humor. My ideal communiqué has no spoken or written words-it conveys the message perfectly using only universally understood imagery. Alas, that ideal is rarely achieved-but we nail it sometimes.
Q: How do you compare your video marketing efforts on YouTube with your blogging program? Are your videos a source of leads, or do you have other goals for them?
A: There are similarities and differences. The basic similarities include our desire to earn respect and trust via authentic, unassailable facts, depicted clearly-and our customers' (almost universal) ability to easily access each. The differences are mechanical.
But, remember, a YouTube video can be easily embedded into a blog post. In fact, that is exactly why I created our YouTube channel. I wanted a place to house my embeddable video for blog usage.
In conclusion, I see them as being one comprehensive toolbox, not mutually exclusive.
Q: What advice would you give to a company that needs to increase online lead generation, but doesn't think blogging is right for its industry?
A: Rethink. And use outside experts to help you rethink. Many times, our leaders are very experienced. That could mean they've been doing the same old thing for too long and are in a rut. I've certainly been that guy a few times. Outsiders can refocus us, bring opportunities into the light, and wake us up.
If blogging truly offers no benefits, big deal. Move on. Do what works for you. There are so many scenarios out there, and so many lead-gen tools available that it should be possible to craft an effective program.
Q: What are your favorite blogs? (Other than ones run by Indium or HubSpot!)
A: Being a Marcom geek, I love Dan Santow's blog, Word Wise. Writing and grammar seem to be a forgotten art in communication. I believe it really matters a lot. I truly enjoy Dan's particular (and proper) attitude toward writing. Moving beyond the topic, he puts the blog together (mechanically) in a crisp, clear, easily understandable layout. Then, he writes succinctly and effectively. Bottom line: when I am done, I am better -- and I can implement what I've learned the rest of my life. That is value. Remember, a good blog (like all good Marcom) is all about the audience and never about the author.
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