Archive for the ‘blogging’ Category

Based on a survey in August of 1500 businesses by Hubspot, those that blogged had 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages.

Most businesses accept, even if they don’t anticipate these sort of figures, that a blog will revolutionise their static corporate website, but trying to get momentum for that internally can be a trying business. Who’s going to write it, what will it look like, who’s going to build it.

Outsourcing the build and content provision makes sense from an operational standpoint, it requires the minimum of internal input and you benefit from the expertise of people who are 100% blog content and blog marketing focussed.

Hubspot say 55% more visitors, on average, anecdotally we’ve seen much, much more than that. How does 1000% more visitors sound (albeit from a low base). Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever your politics, the release of a behind the scenes video showing David Cameron and William Haig chatting about putting together his keynote speech today is an impressive demonstration of how You Tube can work in party politics if the content is right.

In a week when Cameron has been attacked for being an inscrutable toff with a talent for spin, what better way to counter than show him informally at large, in his work place, chatting to class busting favourite William Hague about not making his speech too dull. Read the rest of this entry »

The US Federal Trade Commission has released new guidelines which will force bloggers to disclose any commercial interest they have in products they promote. In the first update to its endorsement guidelines in 30 years, the FTC’s move is seen as an attempt to bring the blogosphere into line with endorsement codes long followed by broadcast stations, newspapers and magazines. 

“We look at it from the perspective of the consumer and the principle being that a consumer has the right to know when they’re being pitched a product,” said Richard Cleland, assistant director of FTC’s advertising practices division. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s an email or Twitter or someone standing on a street corner.” Read the rest of this entry »

Andy Bond, Chief Executive of Asda outlined his new vision for a “transparent” business yesterday, “run for the consumer by the consumer” including web cams of the farms where Asda’s milk and carrots come from and a team of bloggers recruited to tell shoppers about the business, rather than “a bunch of PR consultants” said Bond.

Bond has labelled his new way of doing business as “democratic consumerism” drawing comparisons with President Obama’s politics, “offering openess, transparency, collaboration and dialogue”. Read the rest of this entry »

I spend a lot of my time on this blog advocating the power of blogging and why organisations should be doing it, little knowing that one of my own stories was about to prove the point, and how!

Around about this time on Friday, I was blogging about the Sarah Brown Twitter coverage in The Guardian and noticed that her blog followers had overtaken Stephen Fry’s so I made that the headline and posted it just before nine.

Within three hours it had been taken up by most major UK portals, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Sun, The Daily Mail, Metro, BBC, Yahoo, MSN, Sky plus a raft of tech blogs in the UK and as far as the US and India. Radio 5  live also picked it up and I was interviewed on their Saturday morning show (43rd minute on the iplayer time bar). Read the rest of this entry »

I truly think Scots are taking over the world, they’re everywhere. Gordon Brown, Susan Boyle, my girlfriend, the plumber yesterday and then of course there’s Mashable, the incrediably successful social media guide with 1.5 million twitter followers and 254,000 RSS feeds - made in Scotland, from servers.

Mashable has just posted their top 5 business blogging mistakes and already has 17 comments. So foolishly I’m going head to head with my own. Come on big man, let’s see what you’ve got (cue Victorian boxer type shuffle and arm movements). Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting to read that in these difficult times for motor manufacturers, Toyota has focussed on social media for the launch of the new prius campaign, ‘putting the blog at the heart of the campaign’ according to New Media Age this week. Read the rest of this entry »

Some welcome statistical evidence from the US this month on the value of blogs. US marketing software company Hubspot surveyed 795 businesses that blogged and compared their visitor traffic with 736 businesses that didn’t and the results showed companies with blogs averaged 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tomorrow, I’m off to Provence to contemplate my navel, rather than this blog for a week but meanwhile, I leave you with Elizabeth Sosnow’s 7 tips for extracting corporate blogging gold by way of Jay Baer’s excellent blog.

1.Once Upon A Time: Does your company or client have an instructive story from its history to share with others? Are there some “lessons learned” that could benefit your community?

Read the rest of this entry »

Hitting The Checkout, a survey from ecommerce solution provide Dotcommerce, assessed 20 of the UK’s leading UK retailers and found that, while most have the basics of ecommerce covered, the majority are failing to embrace added-alue content such as blogs, vidoes, user-generated content or social media links.

Less than half (45%) offered any kind of editorial material beyond basic product descriptions Read the rest of this entry »