Welcome to the Escape Blog

Blogging is an interesting marketing activity (even now) that many people still can’t understand in terms of business. Mark White asks what makes a successful corporate blog and outlines some objectives I automatically saw as possibilities that are worth sharing in the different context:

• Increased enquiries generated through the blog using specific email addresses or forms
• Incremental sales which can be tracked back to the blog
• Sign ups either to your newsletter, white papers or other sources of information
• RSS subscribers to the blog or individual categories within the blog if the level of content warrants it
• Inbound links generated by the blog when others reference and link through to the content
• Better Search Engine positioning because of the blog’s regularly updated content, internal structure and inbound links
• New products identified and developed through the market research or product development carried out on the blog
• Customer queries answered leading to reduced customer service or technical support calls

He has other advice in terms of pointers for blog but I will leave you with one thought for the doubters who may be asking, “why would anyone be interested in me?”.

Firstly, if you don’t network, like I wasn’t networking, it may not happen, but think of Facebook (if you know it). Then, think of how voyeuristic it is and how much you read others peoples stuff… then read the people who they link to… or is it just me? I think not.

Blog Statistics in The UK

Matt Ambrose also tuned me into a survey from Inferno PR with some interesting corporate blog related stuff:

50% of the companies surveyed had undertaken blogging in some form and of those nearly 90% said it had generated new business…

Other findings included:

• 64% of UK corporate blogs have been launched in the last 6 months
• 66% of managers in the survey have visited blogs in the last 12 months
• 80% of blog users visit blogs during working hours
• 33% of blog visitors will access a blog on a daily basis
• Amongst purchase decision makers, blogs were second best source for influencing buying decisions, after industry reports