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If you think you’re losing readers on your marketing blog, it might not be because of your content. In fact, they just might be forgetting about you, and that’s a problem you can fix.

Think about the media that bombards your clients — or anybody — every day. There are television shows, blogs, newspapers and corporate marketing materials. It’s tough to work your way into the “mandatory reading” rotation, especially since you’re using your blog to market (and may not be publishing daily).

To maximize your visibility, you need to remind your core readers that they like your content — usually, that’s all it is. Read our recent guest post on SocialTimes to learn how you can keep bringing your readers back for more!

[Source: SocialTimes]

Do you spend a lot of time knee-deep in Google Analytics, looking at the rise and fall of pageviews, unique visitors and referred traffic? While it pays to know your audience, focusing too much on the numbers isn’t the best use of your time. To gain more value from your marketing blog, think less about organic traffic growth and more about the impact of your blog on your pipeline.

A corporate blog’s success isn’t measured in pageviews or any other traffic metric. Why not? Well, your objectives are totally different. You aren’t trying to amass impressions to generate advertising views, which is the prevailing model used by most of the blogs you probably read. Rather, you want to attract attention that will translate to inquiries from prospects, who you then hope to advance through the sales cycle.

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Linking out to other blogs may be the best way to increase traffic to your own. Odds are you won’t really lose any pageviews, as readers naturally hit an exhaustion point anyway, especially on a corporate blog. And, if you line up the right partners, you’ll benefit from their overflow. The result, of course, is a net increase in readership across your entire “network” of partnered blogs.

Sound interesting? Check out our guest post on SocialTimes to learn more.

“Large” creeps its way into just about every social media marketing endeavor. Companies want legions of Facebook fans and Twitter followers. And a blog that isn’t highly trafficked and packed with comments almost feels neglected.

Resist the temptation to believe that big is beautiful, and refocus on marketing basics — you’ll get a greater return on your social media marketing investment.

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It’s natural to want to entertain or inform your readers with the best content you can put together. Rather than push a product, the conventional wisdom holds, you want to engage, interact and make the world a better place for your clients.

And you do. You really do want these things. The only problem, of course, is that such lofty ideals aren’t free, and you’re the one stuck with the tab. So, you need to generate some revenue, and your corporate blog is one of the ways you do that.

To get the most out of your blog, however, you need to find that middle ground between pure advertising and pure news/information/education. Essentially, you need blog content that can unobtrusively deliver an engagement opportunity while still delivering value to your target market.

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Blogging isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to expect readers to engage on some sort of level if you’re doing it right. With that said, some blogs can be the Wild Wild West, which is what gives blogging a bad reputation in the board room and with executives that are stuck in the 80s. So, despite impassioned pleas to get a corporate blog off the ground, sometimes those pleas are destined to fall on deaf ears.

However, no mountain is too high to climb. To reach the corporate summit and gain approval (and maybe even budget), you need to know how to sell the corporate blogging concept to a guy in a tie who thinks the internet is dangerous.

Fortunately, it isn’t as difficult as it may seem.

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It’s relatively easy for companies on the Fortune 500 to get material for their blogs. These large enterprises have access to beefy research departments, paid primary research and other tools that smaller companies simply can’t afford. But, this doesn’t mean you’re stuck writing “soft” blog posts that lack the punch of big stats and pretty charts.

To integrate data-driven blog posts into your editorial calendar, all you have to do is use the news. By working with the research of the major players and media outlets in your industry, you can add more texture to your blog without having to invest heavily.

Here are six ways to turn the public domain into your free “research department”:

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Does having a Facebook fan page, a LinkedIn group and a blog mean you have to content — regularly — for three different platforms? It’s a scary thought, probably enough to turn even the most zealous social media advocate away from the space. Well, here’s the good news: write content correctly, and you can carve it up for use across your entire integrated social media environment. There is no bad news.

Start with the blog post — it’s going to be your anchor. The material you publish on your blog will tend to be longer and more complex than what you put on Facebook, LinkedIn or certainly Twitter. Everything else you write and post should be pulled from this source. Not only do you only write once, with the exception of small modifications, but you ensure consistency across your entire social media environment.

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Technorati editor Don Martelli and I went back and forth recently about whether it makes sense for corporate blogs to leave the comments feature enabled. I’m among the few who believe that comments add little value (at best) on a B2B corporate blog. It’s counter-intuitive and likely to get me beheaded by an angry mob of social media gurus. But, if you think through the dynamic, you’ll start to see how it can make sense.

When I brought up the concept, Martelli noted, “I don’t think this is commonly practiced.” It’s true. I haven’t seen many blogs with commenting locked, though I have seen plenty of corporate and brand blogs that just have no comments posted. He added, “In those cases where comments are off, the blog is more of a news feed than an actual engagement tool.” Again, he’s right, but I suspect traditional views of social media (if there can be such a thing so early in the game) are clouding the ultimate objective: to connect with your market and get them to enter your sales cycle.

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When Mark Hermann, an excellent corporate blogger, bid farewell to his blog, he pulled back the curtain. Among the frank observations he made, one in particular stuck with me: you’ll run out of topics faster than you think. I’ve been there, and it’s awful.

You get started thinking about how much there is to say about your company and your industry, and soon enough, you’re flipping through trade magazines for inspiration. Well, it isn’t always that bad, but the reality is that you’ll soon find yourself struggling to find an insight to provide. Why is that? With rich marketplaces and unique developments in every market around the world, you’d think there’s no shortage of fodder.

Stop thinking about potential for a moment, and turn yourself over to the cold clutches of reality. Most of what you’re thinking you’d never put on a corporate blog.

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