[This article is an update to “Social Media Study: Corporate Blogging on the Decline?” published last week.]

The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth last week released a study that showed blogging rates are down among companies included on the annual Inc. 500 list.

Even so, the study’s author maintains blogging is still a powerful tool to differentiate. It may require a bigger investment of time than microblogging or status updates, but in the right hands, it has the opportunity to help your company offer substance and stand out from the chatter available on other social media sites, according to Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Director of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research.

For content marketers, that means the opportunity in blogging lies in offering value added – namely, thoughtful original ideas, expertise, and analysis in a convenient format.

“The blog is evolving to more than posts of the latest headlines,” Barnes said in an interview. “Companies that understand the value of blogging for what they do are into thought leadership.”

Ford Motor Co., Comcast Corp. and Dell Inc. are examples of companies that have seen their business blogs attract an ever-expanding group of followers as they incorporate innovations to the format and guest bloggers, Barnes said. “There’s a market for content but not everybody is going to be in that market. It’s self-selecting,” she said.

Look for the Influencers

The use of blogging as a niche tool became clearer in Barnes’ recent study of the use of social media by Inc. 500 firms. The 2011 Inc. 500 Social Media Update found that the adoption of blogging declined among the companies that made this list for the first time since 2007.

One reason for the drop may be that some of the companies that appeared on the list are relatively new, and were formed after social media alternatives, such as Facebook and Twitter, became available. Blogging is the oldest and most mature form of social media, predating Web 2.0, Barnes said. “It may not be that they were blogging and gave it up. They may never have had it to begin with and they went directly to other tools that were more nimble,” she said.

Some of the newer companies that appeared in the Inc. 500 list may rethink their strategy and start adopting blogs as their businesses mature. If a company does choose to blog as part of a content marketing strategy, they should use Technorati and other metrics to survey the blogging landscape and discover where the influencers are, Barnes said.

“We may see a resurgence in blogging,” Barnes said. In forums, for example, there is “blogging in the context of this other platform. They’re still a moving target.”

Choosing the Right Tool

Not surprisingly, companies that do blog have found that the biggest challenge is the time and effort it takes to create original content, Barnes said. Going to content providers also has proven less “satisfying” than creating their own, she said, so companies are weighing the investment against using other social networking tools.

The move to using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter don’t necessarily replace the role that blogs play; companies are simply starting to distinguish among the tools and decide which best fits their audience.

“There are more opportunities for customer communications, not less,” Barnes said. “Blogs do something that Twitter can’t: Thought leadership, analysis. They allow for longer and more thorough discussions. Companies don’t have anything to replace that.”

Further Reading:

Blogging Essentials for Content Marketing

Blog photo via Shutterstock.

Federated Media represents a select portfolio of influential blogging sites that the company connects with brands looking to develop content campaigns. Zemanta has created a web engine that helps more than 80,000 bloggers identify trusted sources of information related to their posts, including background research, images and links to other websites or blogs. Zemanta’s technology can be used as a plug-in on a wide range of programs, including WordPress and tumblr., or can be installed as a browser extension for those who work on multiple blogging platforms.

The Quest for Earned Media

Under this new partnership, Zemanta will identify the top users of its technology and, with those bloggers’ permission, will leverage the expertise of Federated Media to identify potential companies or brands that might be interested in commissioning them to write about specific topics or work on content campaigns, said Zemanta’s Marketing Director Tin Dizdarevic.

“Our typical companies invest heavily in content creation, such as Williams-Sonoma or Flixster, and believe that in doing so, they get earned media,” said Boštjan Špetič, Zemanta’s founder and chief executive officer. This new service will help “to make earning media more efficient because, in real time, companies can figure out which blogger is the right target for their content. We would amplify the number of a company’s evangelists out there automatically.”

Companies interested in creating a campaign can sponsor a particular post on a topic or issue. “We would provide a transparent process whereby bloggers, brands and readers would know the relationship behind it. Readers would know that it’s sponsored posts,” Špetič said.

Earning a Living, Not Just Media

The service will also for the first time provide long-tail bloggers with an opportunity to earn money for writing about topics of interest to them.

“If you were a blogger and had an audience, you couldn’t get ad dollars your way. Traditional branded ads don’t work in blogging because no one wants to see more banners. We had to invent something new,” Špetič said.

The blogging industry is becoming more professional, meaning more people are trying to use it as a way of earning a living, Špetič said. Three years ago, the number of bloggers making money from the practice was below 10 percent. Last year, it was above 30 percent, he said.

“Blogging has become part of the economy,” Špetič said. “For lots of bloggers it’s a side income, but the number of people for whom it’s a job is increasing.”

Disclaimer: Zemanta is a CMI benefactor

Gigaom.com

In a move that illustrates the constantly evolving business of “media” these days, online media provider GigaOm is buying the assets of ContentNext Media from Guardian News & Media Limited.

That means online content sites paidContent.org, mocoNews.net, contentSutra and paidContent:UK will be part of the GigaOm family of media sites and meetings. GigaOm is better known in technology, Internet, telecom and venture capital circles than in the marketing business. 

On one level, the transaction is not unusual. Media properties often are bought and sold. But the deal also makes Guardian News & Media a part owner of GigaOm. You might say that is an example of a consumer-focused media company investing in a business-to-business media company.

So here’s the point:To a new extent, venture capital and technology business interests are finding opportunities in start-ups whose business objective is to create whole ecosystems embracing content and transaction revenue streams; commerce and advertising; sales and marketing.

That leads to the development of complicated new ecosystems requiring devices, applications, communications, context, analytics, content, media, and transaction capability.

GigaOm founder Om Malik notes that “we are in a time of chaos where the very idea of media is being questioned.” If so, lots of other businesses will be affected. That explains both the intersection of venture capital, the Internet and content businesses, as well as GigaOm’s interest in ContentNext Media.

At a more tactical level, the deal gives GigaOm more heft in European markets it seeks to grow, as well as a bigger footprint in the New York market, which GigaOm says is becoming more of a technology hub, at least with respect to online content and applications. 

“New York increasingly makes sense as a headquarters for certain start-ups, especially those with ties to finance, fashion, media, retail, advertising and, increasingly, big data and location-based services,” said GigaOm writer Ryan Kim. 

And that tells you something. Over the last few decades, venture capital firms in Silicon Valley have shifted the types of technology firms getting funded. In the 1980s, the focus was largely on hardware. In the 1990s, the focus shifted more in the direction of software. In the first decade of the 2000s, investment shifted to Internet firms.

Now, there is a bigger focus on firms creating platforms for all sorts of businesses whose revenue models focus on advertising. In fact, to use one analogy, Google might be the most successful example to date of a technology or software firm whose revenue comes from advertising or transactions.

Neither of those revenue models historically has been typical or significant for venture-backed technology firms. In fact, VCs historically have not favored investment in media companies.

In the past, if asked to name the category of business a firm was in, knowing only that revenue came from advertising, a reasonable observer might have suspected the firm was a media company.

Google always insists it is not a media company. GigaOm always has been a media company, albeit one whose core constituency was readers with a central interest in the venture capital business.

In 2011, venture capital fairly poured into consumer-facing mobile companies. According to Rutberg & Co., during the first half of 2011 alone, venture capitalists invested $3 billion into 358 mobile companies, with $960 million going to the media and applications sector, defined as social networks, mobile games, mobile advertising, app platforms, news aggregation, photo sharing and group messaging.

All of that ultimately will shape and redefine “media,” with direct implications for all other participants in media ecosystems whose revenue streams are directly or indirectly based on advertising, content sales, content rentals or services to firms that produce media to support a transaction revenue stream. 

The Dartmouth study focused on the Inc. Magazine 500, a list of independent U.S. companies ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2007 to 2011.  The study showed an increase in the usage of Facebook and other social media networks, but a decline in the use of blogging, message boards, podcasting and video blogging.  Blogs, for example, were in use by half of the 2010 Inc. 500 companies, but that number was down to 37% in 2011.

The Content Marketing Institute’s own research involving more than a thousand business marketing professionals also shows a strong rise in the use of social media sites, but also indicates a strong 14% increase in blogging, to 65%, over the same period.

One possible reason the Inc. 500 companies are cutting back on blogging may be economic.  It takes time and resources to maintain a healthy, active blog site. Even a modest investment in hardware, software and people may not provide the return envisioned. “Making a switch [to Facebook] is easier,” says Kathy Drewein, Senior Managing Consultant with Sweet Tea Group. 

But that can be a risky strategy.  Once posted, Facebook and Twitter have full control over your content, while blogs generally are safely owned.  In addition, a blog on your own website works hand in glove with search engines, a key advantage over outside social media services:  Google isn’t indexing your Facebook status updates, but it is analyzing your blog posts and putting your message where it can be found by a simple search.

CNET Social Media Manager Nathan Bransford says social media sites are “increasingly valuable ways” to reach customers. “We utilize Facebook, Google+ and Twitter to make sure readers can easily discover and consume our great longer-form content,” Bransford explains, ”rather than using Facebook, Google+ and Twitter as a replacement for it.”

So while a Tweet might be cheap and easy, it will never have the lasting impact that your own content will.

Blog image via Shutterstock.

During Super Bowl XLVI, 41 percent of Google searches related to Super Bowl ads were made from mobile devices.

And that behavior is not unusual. A Nielsen poll found that about 45 percent of respondents who own both smartphones and tablets say they routinely multitask while watching television.

Separately, a nationwide poll commissioned by Velti  indicated nearly 60 percent of mobile users planned to use their mobile device during this year’s Super Bowl.

The study, conducted by Harris Interactive, also suggested that nearly a third of viewers under the age of 45 would be watching the game with their device in hand, while almost half of all viewers age 18 and older expected to check or use their device up to 10 times during the game.

You might say much television viewing has become a two-screen experience, with complicated implications for content marketing or advertising. The Google data suggests users were prompted to engage more heavily with brands featured in commercial breaks during the Super Bowl. For advertisers spending $3.5 million for each 30-second spot, use of the second screen might be seen as a positive.

The Velti study found that 13 percent of viewers were likely to use their mobile devices during game play, while about 26 percent expected to use them during commercial breaks. So commercial breaks were twice as likely to be the times when users were turning to the second screen.

“Mobile is the second screen that completes the full circle of user engagement, turning advertising into content,” said Krishna Subramanian, Velti chief marketing officer.

That might be true when the content users are looking for on the second screen is related directly to a brand’s ad and message.

On the other hand, users often are multitasking in ways that compete with TV ads for attention. A study by Razorfish and Yahoo found that 38 percent of survey respondents found use of the Internet on a mobile or tablet device an enhancement to the viewing experience while watching TV.

That suggests an opportunity to build more directly on television as a two-screen experience. TV executives with long memories will remember the last 30 years of thinking about interactive TV, when researchers, suppliers and pundits looked for ways to create compelling experiences based on viewer input and response.

As it turns out, users already have voted on how they want to interact, and it involves the Internet and a second screen of some sort, including PCs, notebooks, tablets and smartphones.

The Razorfish study found the top five content categories that seem to encourage multitasking are

1. Reality shows
2. News programs
3. Comedy episodes
4. Sports events
5. Food programming

But most advertisers did not actively incorporate social media or overt Web addresses in their TV ads shown during the Super Bowl.

According to an analysis by Altimeter Group, 32 percent of the ads had no references to websites or social media sites, and only Best Buy had an “Act Now” promotion. 

Still, the two-screen trend seems well established. TV is no longer a passive experience, but it is now interactive in ways that some might not have foreseen. And content marketers and advertisers need to pay attention to that and adjust.

Football trophy image via Shutterstock.

If you ride the subway in New York City, you’ll see postings by Google Inc., among the usual ads for secondary education and other services.  Same thing in the New York Times. Google, which operates the world’s most-used search engine, buys ads and uses puzzles or questions in those ads to direct readers to searches for the answers.

“Who would ever have thought that Google would advertise in a newspaper?” asks Ron Volper, PhD and author of Up Your Sales in a Down Market: 20 Strategies From Top-Performing Salespeople to Win Over Cautious Customers.

But in today’s market, that’s exactly what Google should be doing, according to Volper, a business development and sales consultant who says he has helped 87 of the Fortune 500 companies improve profitability and market share. Buying behavior in both the B2B and B2C space has dramatically, and permanently, changed, yet 75 percent of companies are still selling their products in a way that no longer works, he said.

“The companies that are surviving and thriving are the ones that advertise and market more, both in high tech through the Internet, and in “high-touch,” sending direct mail pieces and so on,” Volper said. “The ones that are really successful have one support and feed into the other.”

Prior to 2008, customers required five touches (or contacts) to make a buying decision. Today, they require eight. The recent recession is partly responsible for that shift: More decisions are being made by senior managers or buying committees — as opposed to first-line and middle managers. Customers, both commercial and consumer, are less loyal and have cut back on purchases while seeking more proof of return on investment (ROI) for a product or service.

“When companies target their products, they need to [pinpoint] the decision-makers more,” Volper said. “They need to pitch to a more senior-level person, and not pitch the bells and whistles of a product but how it will meet a real need, solve a real problem, and prove it.”

Educate, Advise — And Avoid Cutting the Budget.

The proliferation of information on the Internet has also contributed to the need for more contact. “It’s a double-edged sword,” Volper said. While buyers have the ability to research and learn about a product or service in depth, in some cases they find they need more advice because there’s almost too much information and they find it hard to cut through the clutter.

“The people offering the products and services often don’t recognize that what the consumer or decision maker needs is advice and education,” Volper said, a cornerstone of any solid content marketing initiative. “They are leading with price when they need to be talking about value and the return on investment.”

Volper said his research also shows that the majority of companies that are successful in a down market — as measured by meeting and exceeding their revenue and earnings goals, as well as capturing marketing share – have the following common denominators: 

• They have not cut their advertising and marketing budgets
• They have not cut their sales team 
• They have cut fewer employees than their competitors
• They have added more value to their products and services, but have resisted cutting price

Since it takes more to convince consumers at either the B2B or B2C level to purchase, marketing becomes a key differentiator. The tough economy makes it easier to find deals on advertising, so it’s worth taking advantage of media discounts, Volper said.

Photo Credit: Annette Shaff / Shutterstock.com

Photo Credit: Annette Shaff / Shutterstock.com

Facebook, which this week filed for an initial public offering that could value the social network at as much as $100 billion, has only just started to recognize the untapped potential of social advertising, fueled by its own technology, according to research by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Catherine Tucker.

Social networks like Facebook have in recent years faced skepticism about being fruitful venues for paid advertising. Tucker tested this view by analyzing the ad campaigns of a non-profit organization.

Prior to her study, the non-profit group had used either untargeted ads or demographic-based ones. During Prof. Tucker’s study, the group conducted 18 ad campaigns, including four “baseline” programs, meaning they weren’t socially targeted but were shown to everyone; and three “generic” campaigns, meaning they were socially targeted without openly pushing a relationship. The remaining ad programs directly launched off of a relationship with phrases such as:

• “Be like your friend”
• “Your friend knows this is a good cause”
• “Learn from your friend”
• “Don’t be left out”

The 18 ad programs generated more than 3 million impressions, and of the campaigns, the three generic ones performed the best, Tucker said. These ads often simply described the charity and then had an automated algorithm that underneath the ad would note who likes it. The number of clicks on these ads doubled when compared with the baseline programs, and the non-profit group also saw an increase in conversions in terms of increasing their fan base. The charity did not provide details on financial impact.

“Be Social, Not Commercial”

On the other side of the spectrum, the number of clicks dropped by 40 percent with the ads that openly pushed on a relationship, Tucker said.

“By showing ads to people who are already friends, the non-profit group was picking out charity-minded people in a way that they couldn’t get from the demographic information,” Tucker said. “It’s incredibly effective because you could use friendships to find responsive people.”

Just be forewarned about explicitly commercializing friends. “The evidence seemed to be that people rejected the ads when the charity was in on the action,” Tucker said. “Facebook has a difficult line to walk. It can use its data, but has to use the sweet spot and not encroach on privacy or be too intrusive if it wants to do well.”

The Facebook IPO filing may be one of the biggest U.S. stock-market debuts of all time. According to a Wall Street Journal report yesterday, the company hopes to raise as much as $10 billion when it begins selling shares this spring. Facebook generated $1 billion in profit last year on $3.71 billion in revenue. About 85 percent of its revenue came from advertising, with the rest from social gaming and other fees, the Journal said. 

The company captures the video and audio streams of shows broadcast by the major networks as well as cable, and then analyzes the Twitter feeds to see what the audience is saying about them as they’re watching. By monitoring all three sources of information, Bluefin can analyze what TV networks are pushing to consumers, and, in turn, what their audiences are watching and saying back. It helps anyone that uses television advertising to measure not only how big the audience is that they’re reaching, but how much reach they’ve earned through Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media.

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bluefin recently raised $12 million in a Series B round led by Time Warner Investments and with participation from new investor SoftBank Capital and return investors Redpoint Ventures and Lerer Ventures.

“Everyone has audience-size data,” said Tom Thai, Bluefin’s VP of Marketing. “The ones that have access to Social TV data are incorporating [the information] into their pitch that they’re not only delivering the audience size, they’re delivering social engagement.”

Generating Brand Buzz: The Celebrity Twist

As one example, Thai pointed to a commercial campaign that Best Buy Co. launched during the Superbowl last year about its electronics buyback program. The Super Bowl ad featured Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne talking about the program, with Osbourne quipping, “What’s a Bieber” during the ad.

An analysis of Twitter conversations about the ad showed that viewers were talking about the stars, about Ozzy, and about Ozzy’s quote, but only intermittently talking about the Best Buy brand. The buyback program was never mentioned, Thai said.

Best Buy then came out with a second ad that featured a father and his daughter. The father, after purchasing a 3-D TV, was called a “silly head” by his daughter for not getting the “latest” 4-D TV. While this ad didn’t achieve the same volume of conversations, the Best Buy brand and its buyback program were more widely discussed.

Companies can “start incorporating this feedback from the social channel to make business decisions faster,” Thai said.

Not Just Live Event Feedback

The use of Bluefin’s technology may seem obvious to companies looking for feedback on ads during reality TV events such as the voting that takes place during American Idol, or other major live broadcasts such as sporting events, political events such as the GOP debates, or the Oscars. But Thai says not to dismiss its usefulness for traditional programming as well.

“What we are seeing is that people tweet about all shows on TV across the board,” Thai said. “At this very moment, leading companies are looking at data over the course of an entire TV season and trying to observe all the things the data says – examining certain shows, sports vs. reality vs. comedy.”

At the start of the television season last September, TV networks on both the broadcast and cable side were paying close attention to the audience responses to new shows. The Bluefin analyses helped them understand what elements people were responding to.

“Any show on TV, whether big or small – X Factor, Extreme Couponing or The Biggest Loser – there will be material amounts of people who use Twitter to comment on what they’re watching,” Thai said.

Bluefin’s clients are a mix of networks, marketing firms and agencies, including CBS, Fox and Discovery Communications. The $12 million in new funds will be used to expand Bluefin’s sales and service staff in addition to bolstering R&D, Thai said.

TV image via Shutterstock.

The main purpose of both bills was to increase existing controls over pirated information coming into the US and identify ways of cutting down on their influx and use, particularly on the Internet, said Courtney Quish, an attorney in the IP litigation group at Pepper Hamilton LLP.

The issue has been under review for some time, albeit largely tucked away in the backwaters of the lawmaking process. Only in the last week, when details about SOPA and PIPA came to light, did the public and businesses voice their disapproval—and even outrage—over the issues. In reaction to the uproar, Congress decided to postpone voting on the bills indefinitely.

While stopping piracy is critical for the success of certain industries, for the marketing industry the single greatest risk with the proposed legislation is the potential liability associated with either advertising, or doing commerce, through websites on which infringing pieces of content might exist, said Ira Levy, a New York-based partner in the intellectual property and litigation practice of Goodwin, Procter LLP.

In particular, websites that rely on user-generated content will need to make sure that they have a process in place for proactively monitoring their site, and removing infringing content, rather than reactively taking things down if contacted by the copyright owner. The burden of compliance is on the site rather than on the content owner.

For example, in the past if an owner of copyrighted material determined that a video on YouTube infringed, then YouTube, in order to claim the benefit of safe harbor or insulation, had to have a process in place for taking that content down. Under the proposed legislation, YouTube would have more of an obligation to not allow that video to show up in the first place, and if the video is posted, there is a risk that the whole site could be shut down.

By the same token, a marketing team running a Facebook page would be obliged to monitor the page and proactively remove any infringing posts or content, rather than reacting to a request by a copyright owner. Without such proactive monitoring, the team risks having its page closed.

And what about “fair use,” an area of the law that allows the copying of copyrighted material for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work, without the permission of the copyright owner?

Under the proposed legislation, “the copyright owner could go to court and get a shutdown order, and since one may be able to do this without notifying defendant, arguing fair use could be eviscerated if they get an injunction which affects the domain,” said Levy.

From a pure business perspective, marketing professionals also have to consider the financial risks of advertising on sites that may have copyright-infringed content posted on them.

“If you’re marketing on a site and paying for spots, and it gets shut down, those marketing dollars are gone,” Pepper Hamilton’s Quish said. “You could pay for something that is there for a day after paying for a month or a year.”

For now, Web-based activism has had a major impact on the congressional process, but the debate is not over.

“This is one of the first big battles between Hollywood and Silicon Valley,” said Levy. Now, with the vote postponed, “everything is being looked at close to anew. We’re going to see lobbying [by various stakeholders] to turn public opinion because of the amount at stake. This is the best thing that could happen.”

“Some form of legislation is going to come to pass. The biggest challenge is going to be in determining following what the courts think and how best to monitor the (Internet) activity,” Levy said.