Only 157 companies on this year’s Fortune 500 list had a corporate blog. Over half of the Top 5 don’t have a corporate blog. Yet 83% of them are on Twitter, and 80% on Facebook. Even other social media platforms are experiencing a double-digit increase in use (Foursquare, Pinterest, and Instagram).
In their latest Fortune 500 social media report, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research team looked at corporate blogs of these companies and found some interesting statistics.
Who’s blogging?
Many different industries are blogging. 78% of the industries on the list have a corporate blog, with the Top 3 being specialty retailers, food consumer products, and chemicals.
The top dogs are blogging. 45% of all blogs come from the Top 200 companies on the list.
They’re engaging with their audience. 78% of the blogs are updated regularly, accept comments, have RSS feeds, and offer subscriptions.
Yet overall blogging numbers have decreased.
For the first time in three years, the number of companies with a corporate blog decreased from 34% to 31%.
So, where are they?
It appears that the Fortune 500 companies are choosing to talk to their customers through other social media platforms.
Twitter:
- 83% are on Twitter (up 6%)
- All 72 industries in the study have members on Twitter
- 42% of the Twitter accounts are from companies in the Top 200 of the list
- 80% are on Facebook (up 10%)
- All of the Top 10 companies are on Facebook
- All 72 industries in the study have members on Facebook
Google+ & LinkedIn
- 38% are on Google+
- 97% are on LinkedIn
YouTube
- 67% are on YouTube (down 2%)
Pinterest & Instagram
- 36% are on Pinterest (up 27%)
- 20% are on Instagram (up 11%)
Foursquare
- 51% are on Foursquare (up 42%)
The Fortune 500 seems to be adopting the newer social tools and platforms out there, and have engaged with their customers there.
But what about Corporate B2B blogging?
When you drill down into the data you find that blogging by B2B companies has INCREASED 4% according to the latest CMI Benchmark report. So while B2C corporations are blogging less, B2B corporations are becoming more active. In fact, 80% of the B2B companies surveyed said they were blogging — yet, only 60% of them said it was an effective tactic for them.
So they’re blogging, they just don’t know if it’s effective for them or not. And that’s where you, the B2B writer, come in.
Five ways you can help B2B companies with their blogs
1. Create well-crafted, helpful, and insightful blog posts for them. B2B companies will start to notice an increase in website traffic. That’s one of their biggest and easiest measures for success.
2. Increase their SEO rank. You do this by incorporating keywords organically into the blog posts. Link between posts and other pages on their website, and incorporate appropriate inbound and outbound links in the posts.
3. Attract better quality sales leads. Show them how to do this by writing a variety of blog post types for them — from the “how-to” post that explains their complex product or service, to the post that lists the benefits of their products, and all the data-infused infographics in between. Readers will be more educated and further down the sales pipeline when they get in touch with the sales team.
4. Keep readers on the site for longer. B2B buyers need more content than ever before making their buying decision. So your clients will want to keep their readers on their website as long as possible, so they can give them the most information they possibly can. A reader may enter the site on a blog post, but you can keep them there through a series of well-placed hyperlinks, images, sidebar content, subscription boxes, report giveaways, and social media sharing buttons.
5. Remind them of the ways to increase inbound traffic. Namely, by sharing posts on social media, linking to it in their email signatures, asking influencers in the industry to contribute as a guest blogger, replace their normal URL with the blog’s URL in any online comment they leave, and more.
Do your part: help increase B2B blogging numbers
I’m doing my part to help the cause — I’m ghost-blogging for the majority of my B2B clients right now, and I keep getting inquiries from prospects. I can’t do it alone, so I’m asking you to help out. Help increase the B2B blogging numbers for next year’s reports, and get in on the action early.
