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In some industries, the corporate blogging and social media marketing opportunity is obvious. Especially in the consumer space, you use a corporate blog to attract, retain and engage your target market, ultimately with the goal of leading them into your sales funnel and converting on your website. For business-to-business companies, especially in the professional services sector, the case isn’t quite as clear.

Does a corporate blog become relegated to PR tool, or is it primarily a brand play?

With only soft metrics apparently available, it can be incredibly difficult to get even the slightest investment. Startup costs may be low, but content creation and traffic analysis tend to be time-consuming if done properly, making a soft-dollar employee commitment crucial … which is where the reluctance of senior management usually comes into play. To free up resources to tend to your corporate blog and manage your social media marketing environment, you need to deliver a compelling business case, showing explicitly the tangible benefits to your company.

Though B2B professional services companies are extremely likely to generate direct sales online, there is a salient ROI opportunity from this form of marketing, and it stretches well past branding and publicity. Let’s take a look at five ways you can use your B2B corporate blog to gain a competitive advantage:

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There’s a reason why companies are more likely to turn to Twitter and Facebook than corporate blogging: corporate blogging isn’t easy. Twitter and Facebook let you churn out bite-sized pieces of content without forcing you to think fully or comprehensively, let alone communicate a message clearly and distinctly. Well, that’s a limitation of Twitter and Facebook, frankly, not to mention most social media marketing strategies.

When you turn to social media marketing, especially in the B2B space, there’s no substitute for having a blog. Period. Without a blog as the cornerstone of your social media marketing efforts, the rest won’t get far. The effort associated with corporate blogging comes with clear benefits, particularly that you’ll be able to say everything your target market will need to know to make an informed investment decision.

When I ran into an article on Web 2.0 Journal, I basically saw enter:marketing’s approach to social media marketing staring right back at me: it has to be blog-centric, and here are six reasons why:

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Small and mid-sized IT solution providers understand the value of leads. Without a full and steady pipeline, it’s easy to get nervous about the future. And with relatively tight marketing budgets, tough decisions are often necessary, and the focus naturally turns to demand generation over other important marketing initiatives, such as solidifying your brand.

What you may not realize, however, is that an investment in your brand is also an investment in shorter sales cycles, deeper client relationships and repeat business that comes at a lower cost than new client acquisition. Frankly, it pays to invest some of your marketing budget in branding, even if it comes at the expense of some lead generation.

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This is going to shock you: the purpose of this blog is to promote enter:marketing. We’re happy to provide plenty of information and insights to you, free of charge. Anyone wanting to learn something about IT marketing is welcome here. Hey, so are the people who just stumbled into this blog while looking for someone else. But, we don’t invest so much time and effort into our content strictly as a goodwill gesture. We want you to become a client!

Of course, you’re fully aware of this.

What I find surprising, though, is that many companies don’t apply this thinking to their own blogs. They remain focused on “sounding authentic” and “not wanting to look like we’re selling anything.” Yet, when these folks go to over corporate or marketing blogs, they know the drill.

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The next time you take a look at the analytics for your corporate blog, go deeper than the dashboard. Down in the weeds, you’ll find information directly applicable to your sales efforts. Mine this data, and communicate it to your sales team: they will have a powerful new tool for getting inside their targets’ heads.

There are many ways you can use your corporate blog’s analytics to drive revenue gains across your company. Here are my five favorites:

1. Watch who’s watching: Don’t (just) look at volume. Instead, take a peek at the company names. You can use this to find out who in your target market is interested in your company. Also, take a look at the posts they are reading. This will provide insight into the specific products or services they are exploring.

2. Check for repeat visits: Do some companies keep coming back? This speaks to level of interest and commitment to your brand, not to mention specific business issues or products or services. Frequency and regularity translate to higher potential for entry into the sales cycle and conversion.

3. Dig into keywords: When a visitor uses a search engine to come to your corporate blog, the keywords used can be telling. Keep an eye open for those that indicate a business pain point or particular product or service.

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Unless you’ve spent a lot of time sifting through the minutiae of social media marketing, you’d probably think that having a story retweeted dozens of times will translate to a hefty increase in pageviews and exposure for your corporate blog. Well, as you’re planning your social media marketing strategy – as with any marketing effort – it pays to think about the people you’re actually targeting.

I’ve always been stunned by the disparity between the action a story gets on Twitter and the actual amount of blog traffic to which it translates. It seems that one really doesn’t have much to do with the other, and a recent study shows why.

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As you get ready to jump into the social media marketing fray, the draw of just getting started can be powerful. The potential associated with this form of marketing is high, and the pressure to claim your space on the most visible social networks is intense. It’s also fraught with risk, especially if you leap before you look.

Want to make your corporate blog – and Facebook page and Twitter presence – a success? Here are four crucial objectives to focus on:

1. Publishing regularly: this may seem counter-intuitive, as it deals with your company, not your market. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find that both sides of the equation are affected. Without regular content, your market has no reason to engage. Further, it’s challenging to create interesting and useful content regularly, so you need to make that a clear goal.

Objective to set: frequency of publication

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Either you’ve been tasked with starting your company’s blog, or you just think it’s a good idea. Now what?

Unless you’ve already dipped a toe in the blogging pond, the entire experience can seem overwhelming. Since any corporate marketing initiative comes with a lead time – consisting of everything from design and development to legal approvals – the best first step is to start a blog of your own. As your company is going through the necessary machinations, you can take the time to get a feel for what blogging is.

This may seem like a big step, but it’s actually rather tame. Don’t spend too much time planning (or worrying about what you’ll write). Just head over to WordPress, register and look around.

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Organic growth translates to missed opportunities. When you launch your corporate blog, don’t sit back and wait for readers to come to you … and then wait some more for them to step into your sales cycle. Instead, seek them out, and use your blog as a first step in lead qualification.

Combine direct and social media marketing, and you’ll gain a powerful demand generation tool.

Blogs do have a tendency to be discovered (i.e., to gain readers). Whether it’s through searches, a link on your website, a PR effort or tweets and status updates, traffic happens … it just happens slowly. And since high-value readers are likely to be only a small portion of your organic traffic, you could be waiting quite a bit before your social media marketing effort generates any leads. Take a proactive approach, and this changes drastically and quickly.

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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]