COMMENTS
@Chris: Great point. I agree.
Thanks,
Lily Zhu
What a great study - it will be a great tool to share with clients! And, yes, blogging to blog will eventually alienate & annoy users!
What fraction of HubSpot customers blog daily? The same percentage that runs 10 miles each morning?
It'd be interesting to know how "reasonably" active (1 post / week?) blogs compare with inactive ones.
Believe me it works, even for small businesses. It is a great additional source of traffic. What I have not quite figured out is that although I optimize search words for SEO in the blog, they don't score as highly in searches as similar content scores on our actual website
Great post! Sharing this with clients and prospective clients... I think that website SEO, blogging and sharing on social media platforms is extremely productive and yield results that can be clearly measured.
Does this study include blogs that are both a subdomain of the main website (blog.website.com; website.com/blog)and blogs that have a unique domain (companynameblog.com)?
My guess is that it's far better to have your company blog on your primary domain. Thoughts?
Great points and subsequent comments. Keep in mind that blogging, active or not, is not as key as interacting with your commenters.
Thanks for sharing your findings. This is research I want to conduct, but somehow slips off the daily agenda!
There can also be quite immediate results when you blog more, or let a blog go.
I was blogging very regularly until last May, when I took on the project of writing three books in 2009. I finished each of the books, but my blog took a bit of a beating. I wrote less articles, and the result was very noticeable. A compete.com chart shows a drop of over fifteen thousand unique visitors between April and July. I dropped from comfortably within the top 50-60,000 range on Alexa to well over half a million spot in just a couple months.
I could also note that my youngest son was born in April, but I don't think he jinxed my blog. I was just not posting as often, and spreading myself across four other blogs and three books.
It only started coming back when I had more time to write blogs.
The point can also be made that responding to readers is a huge part of this. When you write an article, it is always wise to respond to readers. It is a common mistake that bloggers make to assume their post is done when it is published.
Can anyone point me in the direction of books, articles, etc that can give me some pointers about building a readership for my blog? So far, the response is pretty nonexistent. I think the content is decent. Just don't seem to get the traffic. If anyone would be so kind as to give me some pointers, it would be much appreciated! BTW: Blog site is http://www.mindthegapco.com/Blog/tabid/250/Default.aspx Thanks!
@Peter: we included both blogs on sub-domains of the company websites and those on other domains. Though I'm not sure which kinds draw more readers, I won't be surprised to see more readers for blogs on the sub-domains because it's probably easier for readers to remember the link to blogs in association with the primary domain link (company.com, adding a slash and then "blog")
I'd be interested in other thoughts!
Lily Zhu
@Ari: good point. I agree that blogs serve not only to introduce useful content but also to cultivate strong customer relations/company followings through the conversations that blogs can lead to.
Best,
Lily Zhu
Dear Hubspot, Thank you for your continued datamining in the area of Business Blogging. You guys rock.
We encourage our clients to utilize many people inside their organization so it's easier to get frequent content out the door. But be careful... GroupThink can get in the way if everyone thinks someone else will contribute content. Be sure your blogging software helps you keep content fresh.
Thanks for even more evidence to back up the increasingly apparent fact that blogging regularly really does increase natural traffic and rank. We've increased our blogging frequency and seen significant improvement in our natural ranking for several important key words. We're also seeing an upswing in inbound links, comments, and general social media chatter. HubSpot is a lifesaver!
Great post. I am meeting with a small business owner this week who currently has a traditional website. This will be great information to share with him. It's also a great reminder for my own blog.
Blogging often and consistently with thoughtful, response-evoking content is common sense. Thanks for bring the topic to our attention, Hubspot. We humans often need to be reminded about common-sense ideas!
Very useful post...I always thought that blogging valuable content would be helpful, but those stats are alot more than I would've guessed. With stats like that, blogging goes from being "a good marketing idea" to "a critical marketing component".