Carri Bugbee's List: Blogging

• It is interesting that blog posts shared only on Twitter tended to have 63% more page views than those shared on Facebook and 117% more page views than those not shared at all. 

   

• Sharing your blog posts also dramatically increases the number of inbound links a post will receive. Posts only shared on Twitter had 54% more inbound links than those shared just on Facebook, and 113% more than those not shared at all. 

   

• Sharaholic on top days and times for getting your content seen and shared online. Sharaholic is the leading global social share widget, installed on over 200,000 websites.
• Thursdays win out for the day with the most sharing. Social sharing in general is somewhat unpredictable pattern wise. But Thursday wins 10% more shares than all other days. In fact, 31% of the top 100 social share days in 2011 fell on Thursday.
• “If you don’t publish daily, I’ve found that publishing on sequential days produces a signal multiplier effect on Twitter and via RSS.
• 27% of all content shares occur between 8am and 12pm EST. 
• Gini Dietrich is the CEO at Arment Dietrich and author of Social Fresh Top 10 Corporate Blog in 2011, Spin Sucks. She shared some of their personal research. “We did A LOT of testing to see what made most sense for our readers. Our official publish time is 8am Central Time [9am EST].”

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• As a B2B marketer, your job is to diversify the lead generation offers available on your blog so they apply to these different personas. These offers will fall into two main categories.
• If someone is visiting your site for the first time, it's likely they aren't ready for a ton of product-focused information. Instead, they probably want to learn more about your business and, more importantly, your expertise. The best way to convey industry expertise is through some type of premium content.
• Warm leads need a different type of offer. They already know that you have expertise, possibly because they have read one of your premium content pieces or because they have already talked to a sales rep. These leads want more product-focused information.  They want detail, a discount or a free trail.
• The End of a Blog Post - Putting a call-to-action at the end of a blog post is the offline equivalent of calling a lead within minutes of a conversion. If someone has just read a piece of your content, it is likely they are at the peak of their interest. If you can place a call-to-action at the bottom of a blog post that connects with a content offer similar to the topic of the article, then you can dramatically increase your response rate for generating business blog leads.
• Top Bar and/or Side Bar - Think of your blog like a publishing site. What type of content offers are most applicable to the majority of your blog readers? Use these offers in visual calls-to-action, either in your sidebar or below your blog's navigation. This type of call-to-action will have a lower click-through rate, but it will help capture leads that are not focused on a particular blog post but are instead scanning your blog.
• Text Links - It is common practice to link to other websites and blogs in your own blog posts. Additionally, it is important to take the opportunity, where relevant, to include some anchor text links to offers related to the blog post.

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