The first rule of measurement is know your objectives so you know what to measure. That said, it’s a challenge to decide on objectives for a blog when you don’t know what the possibilities are. At Lion Brand Yarn Company, we outlined objectives before we launched our blog in 2008, but what we discovered was that we would benefit in ways that we did not imagine.
Of all forms of social media, blogging can be the most time intensive. It is also a tool that requires a sustained, long-term effort. But therein lies the power of this tool. Developing a rich bank of content that serves our audience has been an important asset to our company. Here are five benefits of blogging that we have enjoyed:
You’ve likely read about my recent research project with Chris Baggott, Jay Baer and Debbie Weil into the web analytics of corporate blogs. Our underlying premise is that most corporate blog traffic is not what many social media marketers assume it to be. Our survey results actually found that upwards of 80 percent of traffic on most corporate blogs comes not from your passionate community of fans, but from first-time visitors.
If you subscribe to the notion that you want to serve the needs of the majority of your audience in order to maximize the efficiency of your marketing efforts, this metric shifts the purpose and focus of corporate blogging from engagement and community building to winning search results.