For any enterprise today, launching and maintaining a blog as a matter of course is a poor investment of resources. If conversational marketing is to become the coin of the realm for business development success, enterprises necessarily must become adept at starting conversations and listening to conversations in their target markets. Blogging is one tool for effecting conversations but it cannot be disconnected from the raison d'être of the organization. How to achieve value from investments in blogging, as well as other social media, is a question that remains in search of an answer for may companies.
Forrester Research recently released a study entitled “How to Derive Value from B2B Blogging,” containing many containing many valuable insights into the state of B2B blogging and its adoption today.
Some key findings from the report include:
- While adoption of corporate blogging has been growing over the past few years, the number of new blogs established in 2007 declined versus 2006
- Corporate bloggers can’t seem to keep the conversation going. The challenge for many B2B marketers seems to be that writing for a blog is often more conversational, while many B2B marketers have been trained to write with a strictly business or technical focus
- Because B2B marketers aren’t trained to write for blogs, many blogs read like press releases and that is no way to start a conversation.
- Many blog users experiences are poor.
B2B marketers are struggling to integrate online and traditional marketing tactics in a marketing mix that results in more robust pipelines and improved brand recognition. To realize any sustainable success in this new environment , marketers must abandon time-worn broadcasting strategies and adopt community-focused marketing. Community marketing replaces traditional offer-response strategies with communications that foster dialogue; embrace community issues and values; and position brands, vendor experts, and products as valuable community resources.
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