Thanks to its immense positive growth in recent years, corporate blogging has benefited from an upgrade in its status and is now considered as part of a wider topic: content marketing, stated as a “formal business discipline” by the Content Marketing Institute. The reason behind its popularity is its positive and effective impact on business goals, with the ability to communicate and spread the voice of the corporate expertise and values across all stakeholders.
Entrusting the positive impact of this tool on our company goals, we at Stylight launched our very own corporate blog ‘Inside Stylight’ in late 2014, aiming to provide useful and engaging content to our main stakeholders, as well as presenting the company, culture and vision to new and potential leads.
Corporate blogging: a deep connection to KPIs
The theory is clear but how do we actually make it happen? Despite what people might expect, corporate blogs have a deep connection to KPIs, thanks to their measurability. A broader look into them will allow companies to benefit from the corporate blogging bounties and improve the overall achievement of corporate goals. At Stylight, we track our success considering the following KPI’s ranking:
Readers’ engagement on social media:
Corporate blogging and social media are the new ‘match made in heaven’, standing as mutual providers of quality content and traffic. There are two social platforms which rank at the highest: LinkedIn and Twitter. Whilst LinkedIn owes its success to its target audience, specially focused on employees and business partners; Twitter outperforms by using blog posts to jump into hot topics. Two channels, one goal: increase the reader’s engagement towards the corporate blog.
Search Engine Position:
Making use of the right SEO practices makes the blog a source of traffic and ultimately the profit, especially when both of those are hosted on the company website. It’s a known fact that blogs are able to give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links as stated on HubSpot’s last annual report on Inbound Marketing and Selling. In order to challenge your SEO performance it’s important to look thoroughly into the following main points: user and SEO friendly URLs, titles and descriptions including main keywords, content structured by headers in order to enhance readers and search machines as well as the use of internal and external links.
Traffic:
The number of new and returning visitors, along with its evolution are good key indicators not only to the success of the blog but also of the performance of every single post. The analysis of this KPI enables the content team to improve quality and quantity to match their reader’s requests.
Number of blog posts:
Deciding on this KPI allows content specialists to consider the best performing days and hours to publish a post, with all the essential information gathered at Stylight by PR Managers. Several studies have shown that the highest percentage of users read blogs in the morning, with peak in traffic around noon. This leads to greater competition between content but should always ensure you more visitors and engagement. Of course, this isn’t rocket science! The best advice to adhere to if you’re looking for the opportune moment to share your post? Run a test using Google Analytics reports and check your pageviews and visits during the different times and days of publishing.
The impact on PR and corporate goals
Blogging not only has a huge positive impact on PR but also on marketing sales, CRM and HRM. For example, the engagement with all company stakeholders (future and current clients, employees and influencers) is also improved, permitting long term relationships to flourish as well as to convert potential partners and employees into solid ones. It’s important to create and curate the corporate content depending on specific goals and the target audience.
Regarding the measure of the impact on corporate goals; “The Value of Corporate Blogging in 2015” Lewis PR Report suggests that corporate blogging has a considerable impact on the following key results:
Ilenia Sarman, PR Manager at Stylight, confirms this impact and suggests firsthand that it’s relevant to take into account that Corporate blogging aims for long term goals over short term. It’s not only a smart approach but also persistence that is highly appreciated.
In order to achieve that great impact, it is paramount to keep the content within the spotlight our readers are searching for. On one hand, corporate blog readers, especially potential business partners, are most interested in industry-related content, which shows the expertise and authority of the company. In order to successfully draw potential partners in, content curators should develop a strong and clear voice on the concerning topics. On the other hand, most of the readers who read up regularly on the content provided by the blog, aim to gain personal insights into the company, perhaps interested in a new potential employer. Channeling this content with a HR approach would be the key to success.
To sum up, corporate blogging plays an admissible role towards corporate goals. A good use of KPIs and knowledge relating to the reader’s interest will guarantee content marketeers successful results. So the question is… do you think you’re ready for the blogging challenge? Share your experiences with us!
