- Press Release -

March 2010

Corporate blogging still in its infancy

Over 80% of companies who start a corporate blog will never post more than five entries, according to research recently published by IBM. The stark finding comes as no surprise to web content agency Write My Site, which regularly takes over the writing and maintenance of abandoned corporate blogs.

Write My Site’s Managing Director Emily Hill said: “Usually what we find is that someone in the company has been tasked with updating the blog but is struggling either for the time to do it, or for ideas about what to write.”

IBM’s findings back up other research about corporate blogging habits. Corporate blogging is still an unutilised tool for many organisations, with 75% of European companies yet to add it into the marketing mix, according to a survey carried out last month by survey global PR firm Burson-Marsteller.

“Given that the average business which blogs generates 55% more traffic than the average business which does not blog, a lot of organisations are missing out on extra revenue”, said Ms. Hill. “Blogs can also be a fantastic PR tool and a great way of connecting and interacting with your customers”, she added, “but you’ve got to keep them up to date because nothing looks worse on your website than a blog that hasn’t been updated for months!”

Write My Site will be at stand A420 at this year’s Online Marketing Show at Olympia, and will be delivering a workshop about ‘Blogging for business’ as part of the event.

Contact details

Contact: Emily Hill

Website: http://www.writemysite.co.uk

Email: info@writemysite.co.uk

twitter: http://www.twitter.com/emilyhill1982

Phone: 020 8819 9535

Mobile: 07944 252792

Address: 41 Welbeck Street, London, W1G 8EA

- Press Release -

July 2009

70% of small businesses too busy to update blogs

More than 70% of small businesses say they don’t have time to keep their blogs up to date. A survey of 125 small business owners published today by web content company Write My Site shows that 62% of respondents set up a blog in the hope that it would increase traffic to their websites. Nevertheless, only 29% are managing to populate them between one and three times each month, with the remaining 71% admitting that their blogs have fallen by the wayside.

Emily Hill, Write My Site’s MD, says: “Our blog customers call us for two reasons. One: they don’t know what to write. Two: they don’t have time to write anything. More often than not it’s the latter, so we take it off their hands and keep their blogs updated with regular, keyword-threaded content. When a blog hasn’t been updated for several weeks or months it looks unprofessional – people tend to be relieved to learn they can offload the time-consuming task of keeping their blog up-to-date.”

If blogs are such a hassle to maintain, why bother having them at all? In a word: traffic. Google and the other search engines pay great attention to sites that regularly add original – and relevant - content. Digital marketing industry body Econsultancy has used its own blog to urge small businesses to take advantage of this simple SEO strategy: “We are big believers in quality content. Original content. Google loves it too. And so do many SEO experts – the general advice these days is to create subject-specific content on your website, and to categorise and label that content in a way that will deliver a boost to your keyword strategy. Blogs are good for this.”

Hill supports this view: “We have seen for ourselves the benefits of a well-written blog: our own traffic has increased by more than 200% since we bolted a blog onto our website,” she said. “Better still, the traffic is completely targeted: all of our increased hits and enquiries are from people who have found Write My Site by running searches on our keywords.”

Editors’ notes

1) The survey focuses predominantly on micro-businesses. 42% of respondents were sole practicioners; and a further 43% worked within organisations with 1-5 employees with the remaining 15% working for larger organisations.

2) Respondents from a variety of industries and sectors were interviewed for the survey, including people working in professional services, consumer goods, financial services, healthcare and technology.

3) Full survey results are available on request.