COMMENTS
Interesting findings. Was there any consideration made for post quality, perhaps measured by # of comments, Tweets, Diggs etc?
I would love to know stats for how the prospect turned customer found the blog.
These results are not surprising when you look at the number of inbound links blogs create and the SEO impact they have on search engines.
Mark K.
is it better to blog in blogger or word press? which is the best place to blog?
The survey, unfortunately does not show "that the rate of customer acquisition declines steadily with the rate of blog posting". Acquiring customers via the blog declines if you don't blog, which makes sense, but that doesn't necessarily translate to customer acquisition on the whole. Interesting post though.
Does the study show results like the more narrowly targeted a blog then the more likely to generate customers? And does it matter for what size company?
Interesting, but not surprising. What I think is misleading is that the Y-axis measurement is binary. Have you acquired a customer via a blog, yes / no? What it does NOT say is if there is an increase in frequency or volume of acquisition generated through increased blogging, or that customers at large PREFER to purchase from companies who blog.
Nonetheless, the message is clear - there is a definite segment of customers who prefer to buy from customers who blog.
I want to share one real time experience of mine. I have seen a company who post 3 - 4 blogs every week but they get HARDLY 200 hits for a blog.
The reason is the topics which they write. They don't know the target audience. They never focus on Market Research which is the most important factor for any business.
Recently I wrote a blog on same issue
Is Market Research Important for a Business?. Until you give informative or useful information to targeted audience, the blog will not yield you anything.
Hyder
http://www.winwinmantra.com
This study among other things was mentioned in the webinar today,
Vovici Blog Factory Delivers Customers that made me think of a great way to get more people in a company to help generate blog content even if they are short on time, by
having team members dictate blog posts and sending the recorded audio to the marketing team or primary blog editor to either type up and polish or turn into a podcast. Getting more people involved in way that you can would be a great way to help increase the frequency of posts in company blog.
Jennifer
NCH Software Home NCH Software Blog
I think the reason why sales increase due to higher blogging rates is due to the frequency of messages seen. For example, if a company promotes their blogs on Twitter, and posts 3-5 a day, a potential customer will have a higher likelihood of seeing the posts, or at least seeing that they are writing blogs. This makes them seem like a thought leader, expert, and constantly researching their industry. This would make them more likely to buy instead of from a company that hardly blogs and is not as visible.