EMarketer Report: Corporate Blogging Goes Mainstream

I get asked a lot about blogging - especially by academic people. Typical questions/comments are usually along the lines of:

• Is it worth the time?
• I started a blog and wrote a few posts but nobody looked at it.
• I'm not sure what to write about.
• What's the value?
• What's the return on investment of the time it takes to post?
• Do you think other apps like Twitter and Facebook have replaced blogs?
• Is blogging dead?
  

I've found my blog to be one of our NSF ICT Center's most effective dissemination and marketing tools but still have a hard time answering these kinds of questions.

eMarketer just made it a little easier with a new report titled Corporate Blogging Goes Mainstream. I have not seen the full report but was able to pull some interesting information out of the report press release:

• Blogging has grown into a vital marketing tool for all types of companies, including Fortune 500 marketers and mom-and-pop retailers.
• 34% of US companies will use a blog for marketing purposes this year, a proportion that will continue to grow to 43% by 2012.
• While blogging still tends not to rate such high usage as newer forms of social media like Facebook and Twitter, it still has many strengths, including full control over branding and advertising, integration with all corporate web properties, no limits on post length and the existence of a full, easily searchable repository of information. And studies have noted blogging’s usefulness for lead generation.
• By October 2009, according to a Cision-led study, nearly two-thirds of US journalists reported they used blogs to publish, promote and distribute what they wrote. And according to PRWeek and PR Newswire, about a third of journalists used corporate blogs as research sources in 2010, up from a quarter last year.

Here's an interesting graphic from the eMarketer report showing the growth in marketing blogs from U.S. companies.

Blogging is not going away - it is just going mainstream. Looking to market your business, academic program or establish yourself as a subject matter expert? Don't forget about the blog.

Be sure to check out the eMarketer report press release.