Search Results for: blogging

5 Tips on Business Blogging With Minimal Resources

business blogging “Why should we have a blog?” It’s a reasonable question.

Nevermind the fact that millions of businesses are blogging and multiples of those millions of customers are reading said blogs. In fact, 23% of the primary Fortune 500 corporations have an external corporate blog.

Blogs as a content management system make it very easy for content publishers within a company to surface informative, useful content directly to their “customers” and indirectly via search engines and social channels. Business bloggers report their activities have resulted in greater industry visibility, new customers & sales and thought leadership.

My take is that if a business has something interesting to say and stories to tell, then a blogging platform can be one of the most productive channels/methods for publishing and engaging. If not, then there are other, more important problems to solve.

5 Tips on Business Blogging With Minimal Resources

Is Business Blogging Still Worthwhile?

State of Blogging

When I started blogging a little over 10 years ago, there were about 1.5 million blogs (Technorati). That’s about 1 million other people with no idea what they were doing – just like me.

Today, it’s hard to say how many blogs there are globally, but WordPress.com alone hosts 75.3 million blogs in over 120 different languages world-wide with 100,000 new blogs being created every day. In fact, WordPress.com blogs publish 40.5 million posts and 400 million people view 14.4 billion pages per month. (stats) That’s a lot of blogging!

Tumblr as a blog platform, has over 170 million blogs and nearly 76 billion posts published. You can continue this exercise with other blog hosting platforms like Google’s Blogger and Typepad too. And I’m not even mentioning the millions of blogs hosted on their own domains or blogs on platforms like Medium or LinkedIn’s publishing platform.

Is Business Blogging Still Worthwhile?

Better Business Blogging – 7 Lessons Learned from Writing 1 Million Words

blogging tips toprank

Blogging for over 10 years has been quite a journey to say the least. During that time, I’ve had my share of challenges, opportunities, disappointments and surprises.

Back when I started, there’s no way I would have imagined having so many things to say for so long or anticipated what impact ongoing content creation would have on me personally and for our digital marketing agency – TopRank.

It’s true that a blog is not for every business, but every business that blogs, sees numerous advantages. For many, there are roadblocks and unrealized opportunities. Businesses can get caught up in those distractions and let their blogs die. As an example, IBM research shows that 80% of the blogs started there have fewer than 5 posts.

Better Business Blogging – 7 Lessons Learned from Writing 1 Million Words

TopRank Tips: Conference Live Blogging

Anyone that reads Online Marketing Blog from time to time knows we do a bit of conference blogging. In fact, during 2007 OMB covered 14 conferences involving nearly 100 blog posts, over 1500 photos and 20 videos. Besides the conference sessions and after hours coverage, we also typically conduct interviews before the events, as well as video interviews during conferences.

The efforts of the TopRank blogging team have enabled Online Marketing Blog to become the first blog to secure an official media sponsorship for just about all major search marketing conferences including: Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, WebmasterWorld Pubcon, MediaPost Search Insider Summit and eMetrics Summit. OMB is also ranked by Advertising Age as one of the top marketing blogs on the web.

TopRank Tips: Conference Live Blogging

The Value of Small Business Blogging: 3 Key Questions & Answers

Earlier this week Frank J. Kenny did a Skype interview with me about small business blogging and why or why not it makes sense. Frank’s audience is the network of Chambers of Commerce across the U.S.. I think it’s a timely question considering the ongoing “blogging is dead“, “no it’s not” debate that’s been going on for the past 5 years or so.

As a small business owner myself, I’ve been blogging here at Online Marketing Blog for over 8 years and can testify as to the pros and cons like few others can. In our case, we’ve had great success with our blog as a way to achieve industry awareness and credibility, attract new business, employees, media coverage, speaking opportunities and many other benefits.

The Value of Small Business Blogging: 3 Key Questions & Answers

How I Started Blogging. What’s Your Story?

While today’s online media are abuzz with the latest and greatest social media tactics and tools, for many of us that have been around a little while, it was blogging that started our social media careers.

It’s funny to think that in 2002 a type of site called “blog” came up on my radar as a possible marketing tool. At the time, many blogs were personal diaries posted anonymously or by people with a little tech savvy and plenty of opinion. Writing personal thoughts on a public web site was absolutely the last thing I would ever consider doing. However, it was a curious thing and I started a few blogs anonymously to see what it was like. Unfortunately, the excercise was so foreign, poorly executed and without feedback, that I deleted them.

How I Started Blogging. What’s Your Story?

Does It Still Make Sense For Companies to Blog?

Over the past 10 years I’ve had more than enough opportunities to consider whether the investment in time and resources to blog has been worth it.

Blogging for business is a question I think many companies ask themselves as they look at current trends towards time more spent on social networks and changing consumer consumption trends, especially with mobile.

This question came to light recently via Stephen Waddington, Digital and Social Media Director at Ketchum Europe who pinged me for an opinion on the future of global blogging for a blog post he was researching. And that got me thinking:

Does it still make sense for companies to blog?

One way to answer that question is to take a look at how many blogs there are and whether the number is increasing:

Does It Still Make Sense For Companies to Blog?

Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

As companies that realize the value of online marketing understand the need to publish engaging content, one of the most common considerations is a company blog. Blog software is fundamentally one of the easiest content management software systems to install and use. Of course the software isn’t magic. The content and ability to reach and engage with customers is a big part of what makes a business blog successful.

For those companies that are thinking of starting a blog or reinvesting resources into a company blogging effort that has gone stale, some of the most important questions to ask are: Have you identified specific goals for the blog? How will you measure success?

Setting and Measuring Goals for Business Blogging

Business Blogging in a Content Marketing World – 5 Steps to Success

Business Blogging Success Are Business Blogs Dead?

I know it’s a tired, over used concept, but that’s the question I was asked recently for an interview. It’s been asked on and off over the past 10 years or so.

Ironically, we’ll be celebrating 10 years of blogging for our business in just a few months and we continue to add new blogs for clients on a regular basis.

With the combined challenge of creating high quality content over a long period of time with increased competition from overall content marketing efforts, it’s no wonder the question of whether business blogging is sustainable keeps coming up.

Business Blogging in a Content Marketing World – 5 Steps to Success

Thank you! Happy 10 Years of Blogging @TopRank Online Marketing Blog

Happy 10th Birthday TopRank Blog Can you believe it? On this day in 2003 our first “hello world” blog post for TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog was published. 1,328,500 of my own words plus tens of thousands more from our team later, it’s amazing to think it has been 10 years already.

Wow, how time flies!

A HUGE THANK YOU goes out to you, our readers, who have engaged, shared and interacted with us over the years. Your feedback and interactions have inspired us with ideas that we’ve been able spread all over the world.

In fact, I’ll be sharing the top 10 lessons I’ve learned from 10 years of blogging as one of the opening keynote presenters at NMX BlogWorld the first week in January. As I reflect on the awesome contributions from our team and our community to the success of TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog, I’ll share a few of those lessons here.

Thank you! Happy 10 Years of Blogging @TopRank Online Marketing Blog