Benchmarking Your Company Blog

With all the hype surrounding social media, it's sometimes easy to lose track of the fact that social media marketing works as a channel for customer acquisition, according to a "State of Inbound Marketing" report from internet marketing firm Hubspot.

However, like all things, it only works if you work it.

For example, "the more posts a company makes, the more success it will have driving new business. One hundred percent of companies posting multiple times a day on their blogs acquired a customer, and 90% posting daily acquired a customer. This figures declines to 69% for companies posting two to three times a week, and all the way down to 13% for companies posting less than monthly."

And moreover, "Business blogs begin generating significantly more leads when they have a median of 24 or more articles posted."

The reason? It's all in the algorithm. "Businesses with blog article numbers above this critical threshold are likely to have enough content to make a significant impact on search engines through additional indexed pages and new keywords with which to associate. In addition, other sites are more likely to link to a blog that offers a steady stream of content."

How much is a new customer worth? Or a stream of new customers? Is it worth the price of admission to the blogosphere? That's a decision for today's marketing managers to make.