Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

So let’s go back to my question: why do I keep blogging? Why are you blogging? Should you quit? Should I quit? Are there better ways to do marketing, gain traffic, and grow conversions?

Is blogging truly all it’s cracked up to be? More specifically, just how big of an impact does it have on SEO?

In this article, I’m going to do away with niceties, guesses, and “best practice” advice. Instead, I’m going to dish up the data so you can get the cold, hard facts on what happens if you decide to stop blogging. 

When I need inspiration for content that delights, email campaigns that actually work, and social media interactions that are genuinely fun ... I turn to one source: an online clothing store called ModCloth. My closet is proof that their marketing works. (Perhaps a little too well.) And watching them grow has been a master class in what a customer-driven company should look like.
Ask any inbound marketer, and most will name a company whose marketing inspires them like ModCloth inspires me. One they turn to when they need to re-ignite their fires, so to speak.

For this post, that's exactly what I did, with a particular focus on blogs. I asked other inbound marketers to name companies they think are rocking their blogs the way we'd all like to. I left out the obvious suspects -- we all know Moz, KISSmetrics, and other, similar are amazing at the whole inbound thing. But if I’ve left out your favorite company, please share it in the comments or on our thread on Inbound.org.

It isn't enough to simply have a blog -- businesses need to spend time creating a blogging strategy that allows for high quality content creation so you can, slowly, build a reputation for thought leadership that will pay off big time in the long term.

It's the strategy part that trips up a lot of businesses. I've found that documenting your blog strategy is a great way to bridge the gap to successful execution. Check To help you get started, here's a nine-step process for creating a successful blog strategy for your business. Each step is marked by a question. Adapt it based on your business needs and experience. (And you can download a template to document each of the steps below here.)

Online marketers are often in search of cost-effective ways to increase targeted traffic to their company blog in order to offset high CPAs coming from their direct response media spends. Just across the hall (or across the Atlantic in our case), content marketers are looking to hit traffic and lead goals on a shoestring budget. Thankfully these teams in small and large companies are increasing their collaboration and working together on content promotion strategies and tactics that reach new audiences and potential customers at a fraction of the cost.

Here are 15 ways that online and content marketers are increasing targeted traffic to their company blogs without spending an arm and a leg....

Business blogging may be losing popularity among the Fortune 500, but what about the rest of us? There are still many good reasons for business blogging.

But, what about those organizations that have the potential to truly boost their online presence and revenue through great business blogging? Do you wonder whether blogging is right for your company?

This article covers the following:

• Best practices to keep in mind when blogging for business
• How using facts, data and statistics makes your business blogging more robust
• How blogging works for some businesses
• Respected opinions about business blogging – from people who know what they’re talking about....

...A “super bloggers” panel convened at Advertising Week in New York on Thursday, sharing their perspectives on editorial content and sponsored posts with moderator Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s New Tech City radio show. They included Ben Bowers, founder of Gear Patrol, Julie Carlson, editor-in-chief of Remodelista, Emily Schuman, founder and editor of Cupcakes and Cashmere, and Joy Wilson, founder of Joy the Baker.

While their blogs cover consumer categories like home design, baking, fashion and gadgets, their approaches also apply on the corporate side. Some areas below serve as reminders, while other issues like sponsored content are more recent...