The growth of business blogging in the US
Still unsure about the future of blogging for your business? A recent survey by eMarketer.com shows a huge shift towards the social media practice in the US, with 43% of businesses expected to be blogging by 2012 — almost half the market.
While personal blogging has seen a decline thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, business blogging has seen a surge in popularity. Businesses are embracing blogging as it can suit the needs of their customers who refuse to tweet and shun Facebook, whilst improving their customer service and Google page ranking.
It certainly helps that marketers and PRs identify blogging as the most effective way of spreading news of their products and services, in particular in creating and launching virals.
Considering how quickly the UK tends to follow the lead of our friends over the pond, we’re likely to see similar statistics over here.
So the question isn’t really whether you should blog, rather can you afford not to? If your competition is optimising their target market with a blog filled with high quality SEO content, can you really justify not doing the same? This is particularly relevant to SMEs, who are the leading the pack when it comes to blogging.
Don’t forget you can find out more about business blogging and see some great case studies on the Miramus “Why Your Business Needs a Blog” presentation [4:28, needs audio]
Related: Blogging and social media marketing. Original content is key to success
Find the rest of the report on eMarketer.com
Parentdish Update
As you may already know, we’ve been working on AOL’s Parentdish UK site for a while now, and it’s been enjoying a successful few months of late, including a steady increase in traffic, some great articles that have spawned some interesting discussions, and an entry into the Top 100 British Mummy Bloggers!
The British Mummy Bloggers list is updated monthly and voted for by blog readers, so it’s encouraging to see that we’re moving up the chart each time it’s published.
We have a strong writing team at the moment, and so we’re not currently looking for any more regular writers. However, we would like to hear from you if you have any one-off feature ideas. Please contact us here with your pitch.
Don’t forget, you can also follow Parentdish on Twitter.
The Sway #2: Featuring Gemma Cartwright!
Following on from the success of the previous Sway event, we are delighted to announce that the next The Sway event has been confirmed for the 21st July. We can also confirm that Gemma Cartwright, creator of Big Girls Browse and editor of The Nod, will be one of the Sway debaters.
To find out a little more about Gemma, click here for our interview
For those who were unable to attend the first Sway event in May, have a listen to the podcasts on The Sway website from the debaters.
To attend the event, you can either request an invite from the Sway website, or from the Sway MeetUp group. For up to date information you can also follow The Sway on Twitter
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
