Most Business-Blog Traffic From First-Time Visitors
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of businesses that publish a blog say first-time visitors account for more than 80% of the traffic to their blogs, according to a survey from Compendium.
Although most business blogs tend to have a small, core group of
loyal readers, the study reveals just how small those groups are, relatively speaking; the overwhelming majority of traffic to most business blogs consists of first-time visitors.
Below, other findings from The Corporate Blogging and Social Media Trends Survey, which polled 266 companies about blogging traffic, visitor trends, and Twitter use.
B2C Companies
First-time visitors come from two major sources: referring sites and search engines. Among B2C companies surveyed, nearly one-half (49%) say natural search refers 41% or more of the traffic to their blogs.
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Comments
Does this mean that we cannot expect our blogs to be used for customer retention or community building?
They can work for retention and community building. What we are finding is that it's all about degrees. By far the biggest value of your corporate blogging strategy is in introducing yourself to new people. Therefore, your most valuable audience is the searcher...the person who is trying to solve a problem. Widespread blogging across your organization permits you to get your story in front of those searchers. It's the difference between marketing and journalism. Most business bloggers started out thinking this was some kind of journalism and wrote that way. Now it's clear that we are in fact Marketers helping first time visitors solve problems.
Don't despair the community and retention aspects. It was a myth. The reality is that we have lots of ways to engage people we already know, starting with the telephone, email, social networks.....taking people to lunch.
The challenge in marketing is getting in front of new prospects who have problems you can solve. And what the data tells us is that Corporate Blogging is a brilliant tool to help you accomplish that.