DCP Dialogue

SEO: The real reason for corporate blogging

Many companies develop corporate blogs with the primary goal of building a large subscriber base and generating a loyal readership. From this ongoing relationship they hope to build brand awareness and promote goodwill. Maybe that’s why 77% of business bloggers are unhappy with their current blogging efforts (according to Forrester Research.)

Why Blogging is Your #1 Search Marketing Tool, an interesting and thorough whitepaper produced by Compendium, provides lots of statistics that point to the real reason why companies should blog—to drive your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Below are some of the statements I found most compelling:

• As much as 80% of all web activity begins with online search.
• Historically, 85-95% of clicks on a search engine results page (SERP) occur in the organic section of the results page—not in the Pay Per Click (PPC) section.
• Statistics indicate that a consumer’s capacity for corporate blog subscriptions rarely exceeds 2-3.
• Corporate blogging is not about establishing a following—it’s about creating keyword-rich, relevant and personal content that resonates with your target market helping them solve their problems via search.
• A common misconception among corporate bloggers is that they’re writing for regular, repeat customers when—in actuality—those who read corporate blogs tend to skew toward first-time visitors by an 80% margin.
• With valuable and relevant content, frequent updates, and subject specificity, corporate bloggers can greatly improve their search engine rankings.

I encourage you to download this 12-page document and read it from start to finish. You’ll find useful tips on how to select titles and keywords for your blog, how frequently you should blog, who should blog, how short a blog entry can be, and much more.

Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Oh My

Not sure where to start with your social media efforts? It’s always useful to read case studies of how other organizations are tackling similar challenges. On the one hand, it’s great when you can pick up a few valuable tips. On the other hand, it’s nice to confirm that you’ve already been doing things right.

That’s how I reacted to the lead article in the September/October 2009 issue of Spectrum, SHSMD’s bimonthly member newsletter, “Launching Our Hospital’s Social Networks: An Insider’s Perspective.” It tracks the steps that Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago took to develop a social media presence. Written by two of the hospital’s marketing professionals, Leigh Ginther and Laura Prusik, this case study presents an intelligent process and meaningful observations.

To Allow Comments or Not To Allow Comments...

If you have a blog, you know how exciting it is to receive a comment. It confirms that someone out there is reading what you have to say and they too have a strong opinion on the topic. That’s what blogs are supposed to do—inspire people to share their opinions. But why would a traditional newspaper allow anyone to comment on news stories that appear on their website?

According to Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer, “The ability to comment on news stories at Web sites for established newspapers, such as The Chronicle, USA Today and the Washington Post, has invited a wave of input from would-be pundits, class clowns, provocateurs and regular Joes.” In his recent article, "Comments on news stories a double edged sword", Kim introduces us to two regulars who comment on SFGate articles about 16 to 28 times per day, on average.

This recent trend is a major commitment for newspapers since comments have to be monitored carefully. The more politically charged the article, the nastier the comments can get. Perhaps that’s why not all newspapers offer it. NYTimes.com, doesn’t typically allow comments on news stories. The Austin American-Statesman has had to shut down the commenting feature several times when comments got too vicious.

Then why do newspapers bother to allow online comments? The answer is simple. Enabling readers to voice their opinion so easily is the best way to energize and engage them and it helps newspapers develop even stronger relationships with their audience. Statistics prove that online comments keep readers on the site longer and boost page views by 5 to 15 percent. The commenting feature builds social communities, makes a website more relevant and current, and can generate more money through advertising.

According to Ryan Kim, “SFGate averages almost 4 million page views a month for comments. Prior to turning on comments for news stories in the summer of 2007, there were only about 30,000 page views a month for comments, mostly on staff blogs.”

Some of DCP’s clients are starting to add the commenting feature to their online magazine websites. Soon we will be able to report the direct benefits of this capability.

Blogging Means Real Business

Over the past year, I’ve read dozens of articles and blog entries about blogging. Typical subject lines would include: Should businesses blog? Can a business make money from blogging? Is blogging going away? Each article, in some way, questioned the viability of blogging. Then I read this WSJ article by Mark Penn, America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire, and I felt the need to blog about it.

The questions posed in America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire come from an entirely different perspective. Rather than pondering if you should blog, this article reports data on a new profession that “could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture.” Read it to find out who is blogging, how much bloggers are paid, and potential implications from America’s position as the blogging capital of the world.

Here are some interesting quotes I’ve pulled from Mark Penn’s article:

• “In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.”
• “The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income.”
• “Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall.”
• “It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products.”
• “Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours -- 50 to 60 hours a week.”
• “Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites.”

After you read this article, you’ll be looking for ways to voice your opinion and participate in this cultural revolution.

Hospitals Using Social Media

A lot of my hospital customers are thinking about ways to use social media in their marketing efforts. There are many initiatives out there, but if you want to see which hospitals are using blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, here’s a list compiled by Ed Bennett of the Maryland University Medical Center and David Ekrem, Manager, Web Development at the Mass General Hospital for Children.

I found this item on a blog called The Marketing Edge. Host, Albert Maruggi, has a podcast with Bennett that I highly recommend if you’re with a hospital and you want to know more about how to use social media. It’s called "A Good Samaritan for Healthcare and Social Media", and in it Bennett offers insight and observations on how his organization approaches these opportunities, the challenges they face in doing so, and how the industry is likely to adopt them in the future. 

How to Make Money from Your Blog

I was amused and inspired by a recent blog entry I read, “5 Ways Your Blog Can Make Money”. Ian Lurie does a great job of summarizing his experiences with some serious, and some not-so-serious, techniques for making money from blogs. His first four approaches are mostly amusing. But when he gets to his fifth and final suggestion, Lurie gets real and states, “A 100% guaranteed route to success, if you’re willing to put in the effort, is to use your blog to build your business.” He then estimates how much new business has resulted from his blog. That’s when I got inspired.

Do Women Rule the Blogosphere?

Or is it vice versa? Given the growing interest in all things blogging and my gender, I was interested to learn about a survey that was touted to reveal “compelling new insights into the power of the blogosphere and the significant role it plays in the lives of U.S. women.”

The survey was conducted by BlogHer, Inc., which bills itself as “one of the top women’s online networks” and Compass Partners LLC. The survey’s data was obtained from a representative sample of the general U.S. population of women (2,350 total, including 1,250 blogosphere participants) and members of the BlogHer network (5,113).

Among the eyebrow-raising findings:

• Approximately 36.2 million women actively participate in the blogosphere every week, including those who read, comment to or publish blogs.
• More than 40 percent of the respondents regard blogs as a reliable source of information and advice.
• Half of the women surveyed admit that blogs influence their purchase decisions.

In a press release, BlogHer cofounder and COO Elisa Camahort Page made the following observation: “We are losing trust in the government, politicians, the media and many corporations. But as it turns out, we trust each other. The blogosphere is increasingly becoming the digital ‘kitchen table’ where individuals can sit down to have an authentic conversation about all the topics that affect their daily lives ...”

These attitudes and behaviors are something to think about, especially among those of us who are working hard every day to win the attention of the female audience—including healthcare marketers hoping to influence household decision-makers.

Companies are Investing in Digital Marketing

While organizations’ budgets are shrinking, two recent surveys reveal that top U.S. marketers predict an increase in digital marketing spending in 2009. Read on to discover some high points from these surveys, plus general predictions from Forrester Research.