In a recent study conducted by Nora Ganim Barnes, PhD, at The Center for Marketing Research, 157 companies on the Fortune 500 list (31%) have public-facing corporate blogs, a decrease of 3% in the number of blogging companies from 2013.
What’s the reason? Well put simply, blogging for business is hard. It takes ongoing resources and time that are not needed on most social media platforms.
Brand blogs can produce some big results when you take time to put together the right platform. In fact, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who don’t (as found by Social Media B2B).
The Social Fresh community nominated nearly 100 company blogs for our Top Corporate Blog awards this year.
In order to make it to this final nomination list for our judges to review, objective metrics were used such as Pagerank, Alexa.com traffic numbers, recency of content, number of nominations, and adherence to nomination requirements.
OUR JUDGES
We have teamed up with five industry thought leaders on blogging, marketing and business who will evaluate the submissions compiled by our Social Fresh Staff.
- Jay Baer (@JayBaer) President of the social media and content marketing consultancy Convince & Convert
- Katie Morse (@MissKatieMo) Head of Social Media at Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter
- Augie Ray (@AugieRay) Customer Experience & Social Business leader, former Forrester analyst & social media lead at USAA, still blogging at ExperienceTheBlog.com
- Michael Brito (@Britopian) Group Director, Social Strategy at W2O Group
- Brian Honigman (@BrianHonigman) a marketing consultant, freelance writer and contributing writer to the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, the Huffington Post, Forbes, the Next Web, Mashable and others.
OUR FINALISTS
In alphabetical order
- Blender Bottle – Fitness and nutrition tips for healthy people
- Buffer Blog – Social media and content marketing tools, tips and tricks from Buffer
- Chili’s Grill & Bar – Fast, casual posts from a fast, casual restaurant
- Fiat – Auto maker posting about the Fiat culture
- First Round Review – VC Firm posting about community building and entrepreneurship
- Hubspot – Inbound Marketing blog sharing the best content marketing posts
- IBM – Various lines of blogging from around the globe
- Ignite Social Media – social media agency blogging about news, tips and tricks for enterprise social marketers
- KISSmetrics – Online marketing, analytics and more
- Likeable Blog – social media agency providing social news, tips and tricks.
- Modern Marketing Blog – Eloqua/Oracle’s hub for all things cloud marketing
- Post Planner – social media blog with tips and tricks for getting the most out of social content
- The Shapeways Blog – 3D Printing News and Innovation
- Simply Measured – social media analytics and advice for smart marketers
- Socially Stacked – social media Tips, Facebook news and other free resources from Short Stack Labs
- Southwest Airlines – travel stories and behind the scenes content from SWA
- SugarString – Gizmos, Gadgets and Tech Stories sponsored by Verizon
- The Abandoned Cart – posts about eCommerce optimization from Sales Cycle
- The Mary Kay Blog – women’s empowerment, beauty/fashion tips and behind the scenes at Mary Kay
- United Hub – News, updates for frequent flyers and more from United Airlines
- The Whole Story – Recipes, culture and other inspiring nuggets of content from the folks at Whole Foods
Congratulations to the company blogs that made it to the final round of judging. These blogs will all be reviewed closely by our judges and scored based on:
1. Calls to action 2. Content quality/consistency 3. Community size/engagement.
Who are your favorites? Who do you think should make it to the final Top 10 Company blogs?
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