THE SOCIAL TIMES — As a blogger, I’ve always kept in mind the basic rule that you want to attract an audience and retain it. The traditional dynamic is to retain existing readers while attracting new ones, growing your base of loyal followers over time while continually adding to it. There’s nothing complicated in this thinking. Well, even the new media world is changing, and I’m seeing a shift in what has always been a reliable rule of thumb. In the past, when I’ve watched blog analytics, I’ve always looked for steady growth in direct traffic – i.e., readers who come to the site through a newsletter referral, use a bookmark or enter the URL directly into a browser. These are the people who are most committed and have turned reading the blog into part of a routine. Increases in referred and search engine alongside it signal the attraction of new readers. Lately, however, I’ve been seeing a change in this trend...

READWRITEWEB — These days, it's no longer enough to have an inviting storefront and amazing products on your shelves, whether physical or digital. Fueled by social media, with which even the search engines scrambling to keep up, the Web is now happening in real time. How can a small company stay competitive? One critical component of the answer to that question is something that most businesses have never had to consider doing in the past: Become a publisher. Having somebody design and build your website is only half the battle. That site needs regularly-updated content and the easiest way to make that happen is with a blog...

IMEDIA CONNECTION — Has social media killed the corporate website? Probably not, but it has certainly changed the way marketers should approach their online hubs. The increased need for regular engagement and a value exchange between marketers and their customers has granted new importance to company blogs, which today serve as living, breathing reflections of a brand's mission, objectives, and overall character. Below are some strategies we utilize at digital marketing agency 360i in order to keep our audience of clients and digital marketing enthusiasts engaged and informed via our Digital Connections blog...

HUBSPOT INBOUND INTERNET MARKETING BLOG — Excellent content leaves the reader with something new that they didn’t have before. People like to get something from blogs they read. You don’t have to be Shakespeare to have a good blog. The fact is that web sites with a blog received 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages than those that didn’t have a blog. Businesses in particular can capitalize on this because businesses that blog experience 126% higher lead growth than non-blogging businesses. Can you really afford to miss this opportunity?...

MASHABLE — In a world where small businesses with corporate blogs receive 55 percent more traffic than small businesses that don’t blog, companies should be taking note on how to improve their blogs, attract more readers and get more results. But still, a lot of companies with corporate blogs seem to be bogged down in uniformed policies and simply aren’t thinking outside the box. Afraid to take on colorful personalities or step a bit outside of their company’s happenings, many corporate blogs employ an official tone announcing the play-by-play updates of company news. This is just one mistake that businesses are making in the blogging world. There is a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we’ve narrowed down the key elements that companies should focus on...