What Constitutes A Successful Business Blog?
07/02/2008
Today's (where did yesterday go?) Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting article based on a Forrester Research study. Forrester reviewed 90 enterprise blogs from the Fortune 500 list. The conclusion was that " ... most B2B blogs are “dull, drab, and don’t stimulate discussion.” A few stats from the WSJ article:
74% rarely get comments
70% stuck to business or technical topics
56% simply regurgitated press releases or other already-public news
53% of B2B marketers say that blogging has marginal significance or is irrelevant to their strategies
What do you think of this? - ".. the number of new corporate blogs among the companies Forrester tracks has dropped from 36 in 2006 to just three in 2008."
Guess reflects that over half of the people interviewed don't think much of blogs as a relevant strategy. I would like to understand how these organizations perceive blogs. Do they think that that blogs are simply websites that can "talk back?" What do they call success?
The first stat - 74% rarely get comments - is not a big surprise. The success of a social media strategy begins with identifying goals and objectives that support business outcomes. Often "comments" are not an indicator of success. It is very difficult for most business blogs to pull in a significant number of comments. What constitutes a good number of comments? 2? 10? 100? If you are using comments as a success metric I would caution you to proceed with care.
Sometimes the 'community' is uncomfortable posting. Within its niche Indium's Dr. Lasky's Blog is a highly successful corporate blog. Although Dr. Lasky does not receive a lot of comments he gets off-list emails. Ask RIck Short, director of marketing communication and he'll tell you that the 9 - yes ma'am count 'em 9 corporate blog has given Indium an edge and competitive advantage.
I find Forrester's own blog well done and informative, however you'll notice that most posts do not receive many comments. Question Charlene Li or Peter Kim or Jeremiah Owyang or John Cass .. does Forrester consider The Forrester Blog For Interactive Professionals a success? If so why or if not why keep on truckin'?
One B2B company that is pulling in comments is the president of M/A/R/C (omnicom group), Merrill Dubrow’s blog. Merrill engages his community in conversation that is often not “work related” which provides additional texture and interest to business only topics. One recent blog, Attention Researchers: What do you think of this type of research? received 46 comments. Not bad for a business blog you say .. amazing for a business blog I tell you. I am still amazed that we are averaging over 13 comments per posting...... And I post 3 times a week........ thanks for getting us involved..... you were right and I was wrong ...... I didn't know how powerful this could be. Merrill Dubrow
Bloggy disclosure: M/A/R/C is a Diva Marketing client. Love when clients think you are right (smile!). It helps when clients are smart and open to innovation .. rather like Merrill.
What makes a successful business blog to you? By the way if you want to know anything about measurement drop by Katie Paine.
Thanks to Getentrepreneurial for the graphic.