Image courtesy of juliegomoll.typepad.com

I began my “career” as a professional writer as a personal blogger. I use the term career lightly because when I started writing online, I wasn’t doing it for money. Personal bloggers typically write for validation and attention rather than profit, and so we measure the success of our personal blogs differently.

A personal blog measures success by comments, RSS subscribers and traffic. But as I found when I began writing for corporate blogs, measuring the success of blogs written as part of a content marketing strategy is very different.

Even the most successful corporate blog rarely gets a ton of comments. Also, subscriber numbers may not be a good indicator of whether or not your blog marketing is working for a corporate blog. If comments and RSS subscribers aren’t reliable measurements, what should you be looking at?

3 Ways To Measure The Success Of A Corporate Blog

Search Engine Traffic

One of the best reasons to start a corporate blog is to boost your search engine traffic. Google in particular loves blogs because of the evergreen nature of the content. Corporate blogs also give you endless opportunities to improve your keyword density and internal linking. Every corporate blog should use some kind of tracking system to determine how much traffic you’re getting and where it’s coming from. Keep an eye on how many visitors you’re getting from search engines and what keywords they are using to find you. You want to focus on watching this number grow from month to month.

Twitter Traffic

While personal blogs rely on the number of comments each post gets to gauge audience interest, the mark of an interesting corporate blog is usually seen in the amount of attention it is getting on Twitter. It’s not uncommon to see a post on a corporate blog retweeted several times and still have very few comments. You can keep track of your Twitter exposure by watching your stats – how many visitors are referred by twitter, installing a “Tweet This” counter on your blog, or monitoring a Twitter search that alerts you to any time your blog is mentioned on Twitter. I recommend a combination of all three tools to get the most accurate picture.

Outbound Traffic To Your Main Site

Unless you’re selling advertising on your corporate blog, traffic alone will not improve your bottom line. It doesn’t matter if Google is sending you thousands of visitors a day if none of them end up buying what you’re selling. It’s important to keep the end goal in mind when you’re working to build a successful corporate blog. Pay attention to how many visitors leave your blog to go to your company’s About page or, better yet, Order page.

Always remember that a corporate blog is a tool. Popularity alone does not pay your vendors or employees. Put your focus on measuring the activities that directly impact your profits.

Britt Reints is still a personal blogger living in Orlando, Florida.  Her personal blogging friends think she is a sell out.  She thinks she has cuter shoes than they do.

Next year's goal: Top spot?

Christmas came a little early for ideaLaunch yesterday – we discovered that content marketer extraordinaire, Joe Pulizzi, and his gang at Junta42 awarded ideaLaunch the #19 position of the 313 marketing blogs they reviewed.

Woo!

We’re #19! We’re #19! As you can see to the right, it’s a crowning piece of flair on the site.

Seeing as ideaLaunch came in #31 the year before, it’s a marked improvement that the whole team is quite pleased with, especially as there was more competition this year. So how did this content marketing agency improve its rank and how can you get your blog on the radar of influencers in your industry?

• Make your content marketing a priority. Whether it’s your blog, vlog or social media interactions, make sure you can commit to a steady schedule of timely updates. For us, it’s generally a Monday to Friday daily update. Don’t let a week slip by (perhaps with exception on the holidays) without new content.
• Hire a freelance writer (… said the freelance writer). A freelance writer can be well-versed in your industry, have a way with words and has your schedule and deadlines as a prime focus. WriterAccess has a nice collection available writers, as does LifeTips, where you’ll find topic specialists.
• Welcome guests. Guest writers can breathe fresh air to your content marketing, bring added credibility to your brand and if they have a following, their audience might come along for the ride. What’s not to love? ideaLaunch has recently been graced by the wordsmithiness of Britt Reints and we’re better for it.
• Engage industry leaders. Read what they’re writing. Comment on their site. If you draw inspiration from their blog, say so and link back. Participate in social networking sites. Above all else – be genuine about it. There’s no need to be a suck-up – even online most people can see right through that.
• Bribery.
• Get down with the SEO. Understand the keywords that leaders in your industry would be searching with and use them effectively within your content marketing. Not sure how? Ta-da: Here are some free SEO tools.
• Have your own voice. It’s fine to pass along news, but more importantly, you should be adding value to the conversation. Throw in an opinion. Develop your own theories. Show your sense of humor. Don’t just parrot what others said two days before, instead, find your niche.

Image c/o http://www.cbc.ca

At ideaLaunch, we agree with Kipp Bodnar of Social Media B2B that having an army of bloggers is the best way to build hoards of great content and offer in-depth coverage on industry trends. It also takes the pressure off any one person being solely responsible for producing all the content on our company blog. You’ve seen regular blog posts from iL staff members and Jen Byck, our Content Monkey; now we’re inviting guest bloggers with proven experience in content marketing to share their insight. Stay tuned for posts by Vince Font and Britt Reints later this month.

So how do we manage so many contributors, both on-site and off? Here are a few tips for keeping the blog posts rolling in and the sanity under check.

1. Make sure you have a company blog plan. What’s the overall goal of your blog? If it’s for SEO, do you have a plan in place to attract traffic and rank for targeted keywords? Is your blog purely informational, there to establish trust with readers and customers? Is it a tool to make your company an industry leader? Are there any off-limits subjects? Confidentiality clauses with clients or barriers in the legal department? What’s your tone—serious, informational, funny? Make sure everyone’s on the same page before they hit the “publish” button.
2. Consider readers and search engines. We like our posts to appeal to readers as well as search engines. Tell your troopers to accompany their posts with an image (and image credit), video or some other visual element—everyone likes a pretty picture. (It also looks better when we link to the post on our Facebook account.) Give employees and guest bloggers ideas for appropriate topics and the keywords you want to target to help your blog get exposure in Google. They should include internal links and optimize posts with meta tags.
3. Get everyone involved promoting their blog posts in social media. Once a blog post is up, only half the work is done. Now it’s time for all the contributors to publicize their post on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other social media outlets, as well as comment on each other’s posts. When everyone pitches in, it’s less work for all. Reward contributors with the highest-traffic blog posts or posts with the most comments.

Do you manage a menagerie of bloggers? Have any tips to share with me?

Photo: Associated Press

Thanks to social media, you didn’t have to watch the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) to know about the Kanye West – Taylor Swift – Beyonce debacle (but if you’re still not in the loop, check out what Kanye’s publicist has the joy of dealing with now).

That Kanye is all class, I tell ya.

Right. Anyway – what does this have to do with commenting on blogs and websites? Just as Kanye barged in, attempted to steal someone’s thunder, barked his agenda and completely misread the crowd – as does many a so-called marketer who’s looking to drive traffic to his website.

I’m sure you’ve seen it – you’ve come across a great blog post, perhaps from the likes of Seth Godin or Mashable, that is bound to spark some terrific dialogue. You take a look at the comments and amongst the real banter are those generic and embarrassing “Great post. If you like that topic, check out www.blahblabblahblah.com!” comments.

What makes these marketing efforts particularly embarrassing is that they’re often done on behalf of decent companies that have put a lot of effort into their web content.

You might have fantastic web content. You might know your SEO basics. You might be following a well-meaning content marketing strategy that focuses on getting as many inbound links as possible. But that’s no excuse for lame, clingy, self-promotional comments that only serve as noise on a quality website. They’re not only obnoxious, they’re also reputation damaging.

The comment section of blogs and websites IS a great place to network and drive some traffic to your website, especially if you have relevant content a specific audience would be interested in, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. The walk onto someone else’s stage and shout your message or url – a.k.a. “The Kanye” – is the wrong way.

Want to know the right way to link to your site from the comment section of other websites? Stay tuned!

Speaking of stories, did you see the article in Print Solutions Magazine by Rebecca Trela called “Content Marketing on Promotional Products”? Trela interviews Byron about why content is “more alchemist than a regent” in a kingdom where content reigns supreme. “The key to a successful promotion,” says Trela, “is delivering a little of what the customer wants (educational information, reminders or factoids) and a little bit of what the promoter wants (visibility).” In the same vein, ideaLaunch enables our clients to give their customers what they want—tips, articles, advice, entertainment—in exchange for visibility—niche sponsorships, higher search engine listings for targeted keywords. We’re also able to follow the trail from the SEO-friendly content we created to the actual ROI of higher click-through rates and conversions on client websites with our tool WordVision. Exciting stuff.

In other news, I’m looking for three fall 2009 interns for editorial, SEO and social media positions. If you know anyone in the Boston area looking to jumpstart a career, send them my way!

5/25 Ambal Balakrishnan has a wonderful list of posts on “How to write compelling content and connect with your readers.” I know this means this is a list within a list, but I think it is important.

5/26 Nicholine Hayward explores brand storytelling in a beautifully put-together white paper “Motive, Means and Opportunity.”

5/26 Ian Lurie is in my review every week. That’s because he has good stuff like “32 tips to make online customers love you.”

5/28 Hubspot’s Prashant Kaw brings new meaning to the term “multi-media blogging” by both writing about “5 Reasons to publish your content in multiple formats,” and including graphs, videos, and pictures in the entry. Nice work.

5/29 David Finch gives “10 sure-fire ways to maximize your online distribution channel.” You are guaranteed to have already heard half of them, but review is always good.

John Cass presented “Marketing with Corporate Blogs: Customers are willing to talk if you are willing to listen,” at the New England Expo. I’m his intern so I am pretty much forced to go- but I am really glad I went. Here are the cliff notes in case you missed it.

John started with three numbers; 78, 62, and 92.

78 million baby boomers

62 million Generation X, which live in the shadow of theBaby Boomers

and 92 Generation Y who are changing the landscape of business and media

John explained that these Generation Y digital natives grew up with the internet, social networking and blogging. He posted statistics (John loves numbers) that people got only 10% of their news online in 1995 as opposed to 2005 when people got 60% of their news online. The changes in media have created problems for internet users, but companies who work to solve these problems will go far with customers. Today, people need to cut though an incredible amount of information on the internet, are bombarded with many interruptive advertisements, and hold a natural distrust for corporate messages. Instead, John advocated for permission marketing, which, as Seth Godwin put it, means sending people information only if they want it. But, to become a resource for customers and connecting with Generation Y online, you need a strategy using content marketing and social media engagement using social media platforms like blogs.

This begs the question; what makes for compelling blog content? John gave two examples of good blog content; Microsoft’s Scobleizer and Indium’s Dr. RonLasky.

The culture of Scobleizer fostered a culture of openness about Microsoft because it had both criticism and excitement about products, featured voices from inside and outside the company, and it changed customer’s perception of Microsoft for the better. Dr. Ron Lasky’s blog on Indium had great transparency because he talked about his granddaughter, archery, and his work at Indium which added a human element to a stiff and untouchable company.

John said to think about four things when starting a blog:

1. Time: Understand the level of commitment needed to start a blog, read what is going on in the wider community, and comment on other blogs regularly.

2. Dialogue: The key to building trust through authenticity is fostering conversations between bloggers and community members.

3. Entertainment: Write with a style and personality that brings readers back to your page. (Here is when I apologize for the lack of punchy humor in my last three blogs.)

4. Content: Use compelling content to engage a Generation Yand your audience, because what works for Generation Y will work for the Baby Boomers and Generation X.

Why blog, you ask? Blogging is a content marketing strategy that combines search engine optimization tactics with social media to bring interested organic traffic to your website. Blogs are perfect for how the ecosystem of the web works because they are indexable, have compelling content, and foster links between sites in the natural course of dialogue in the community.

To create a blogging infrastructure, John said to create a blogging plan based on goals (sales, SEO traffic, customer support). Do a blogging assessment based on keyword research, blog rolls and tools for research and monitoring. Also, he said it was important to keep the company culture and capabilities in mind when creating a blog.

His biggest success example was the NokiaN90 Blogger Relations Campaign where people wrote about the campaign and phone on their blogs. The worst example was DellHell, the Buzz Machine, where one blogger ruined Dell’s reputation.

John left off that the main thing is to remember that blogger relations is not media relations: it is a conversation and community management. The goal is not to get out a message, it is to engage and sustain evangelists and community members. Be a human.