Marketing analytics company eMarketer released more findings from the corporate blogging world recently.
As more companies look to blogging as a way to improve their customer relationships, improve their standing in the industry as thought leaders, and even generates sales, it’s important to learn how companies are tracking results. I was a little surprised by the findings, but it makes sense.
Business Blogs Looking for Comments
Here is a bit from article.
What Makes for a Compelling Corporate Blog?
The survey represented engagement in terms of blog posts that receive comments, so the CMOs polled consider blogs more effective when they produce a lively discussion rather than just pushing content out into the world. The next-most-important characteristic was daily posting; about a quarter of respondents thought it was critical to keep the blog constantly fresh.
CMOs specifically cited Netflix and JetBlue Airways as the companies with the best corporate blogs.
Comments were the number one attribute companies used for tracking the effectiveness of their blogs.
I wasn’t surprised to see blogging frequency listed as a big attribute to success for corporate blogs. I was, however, surprised to see blog commenting up as high as it is. After I thought about it though it makes sense.
Businesses want to engage their target customers and provide value. A comment can serve as an indication of how well you’re engaging your customers and providing the value they’re looking for and you’re trying to provide. It takes effort for people to leave a comment. They have to feel a connection to the community and the blog and feel it is worth their time and effort to add to the discussion.
Some things I’ve noticed in my time as a blogger is the kind of articles that get comments tend to be a bit on the controversial side. This usually requires the reader to take a side of a topic and stick to their guns. The blog posts with an extremely high number of comments tend to cover topics that have a close to 50-50 split on reader opinion.
While controversy seems to cause commenting, I also notice in some instances that passion for a topic can spark engagement. On my own blog Country Music Life the most commented on post was about a relatively unknown country music artist. The reason I think the post received comments was because the artist typically didn’t get much press and his hardcore fans were simply excited about the mention.
Something else that seems to spark comments is a revelation of sorts or something amazing. Just today I read a blog post that was actually written some time ago. The post was about a guy that tried soap free bathing. The results worked for him. You can tell by the comments people were genuinely intrigued by this experiment. Some doubted the results and others jumped into the experiment themselves. A revelation leading to over 300 comments.
To recap…
3 Ways to Generate Comments
- Controversy
- Play to the passion of readers
- Share revelation
Bonus: Businesses Need to Blog
The eMarketer article contained another interesting graphic. Businesses surveyed feel they need a corporate blog to simply keep up with the competition. Customers are learning to expect a blog and companies realize it’s a cost of doing business these days.
