search marketing blog: ambergreen

Successful corporate blogging comes down to a three step process according to Forrester Research as it publishes its latest study, The ROI of Blogging: The Why and How of External Blogging Accountability.

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Creating a successful corporate blog that that increases brand visibility, customer insight and sales generation is a three step process according to a new report from Forester Research.

The study - The ROI of Blogging: The Why and How of External Blogging Accountability – was specifically developed to help companies understand the complexities of corporate blogs and how to ensure that your blog is successful in increasing brand visibility and generating customer response.

Forrester Research said that the most common benefits for corporate blogs were increased brand visibility, reduced impact from negative user-generated content, savings from customer insights and increased sales efficiency.

Yahoo’s ‘Brand Universe’ brand centric websites which were announced in November 2006 have started to go live, with sites such as Nintendo Wii which contain no original content but host scraped content from other sites.

Revolving around one brand alone, ‘Brand Universe’ sites take content from social media site such as Flickr, Yahoo! Answers and other Yahoo! owned sites to deliver a brand focused way to connect user interests across their properties.

By the end of 2007 Brand Universe is set to have 100 brand sites up and running, including sites for popular TV programmes, films, bands etc – some of the sites due to launch next include Sims, The Office and Harry Potter.

Mobile phone users accessed the internet on the move more than 15 million times in December according to data from the Mobile Data Association.

While the increase in usage in December showed an increase of one million sessions from November, it is anticipated that seasonal gift giving could be behind the growth. As phones continue to become more sophisticated and user friendly, an increase was always on the cards. 

Nick Lane, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media, told the BBC that, “The continued advancement of handsets means people are beginning to spend more time familiarising themselves with new services.”

Lane also said that by the end of the year 25% of the world’s 797.6 million mobile phone subscriptions will include web browsing facilities.

MySpace and similar social networking sites could also be a key to the rise in the mobile internet usage; mobile consumer research firm Telephia recently showed that 4% of UK mobile users have uploaded content created on their mobile phones to sites such MySpace, blogs and personal web pages.

MySpace continues to lead the way in the social networking arena, with Windows Live Spaces and YouTube following closely behind as UK mobile users increasingly upload content caught on their mobile phones according to new research from Telephia.

21% of the UK’s mainly teenage mobile social networkers post content to their MySpace account using either their mobile or PC, with 18% using Windows Live Spaces.  YouTube and Bebo getting 9% reach respectively.

The number of UK users posting content created via mobile devices has steadily increased over the past year, and looks set to grow throughout 2007.

While user generated content boomed in 2006, according to new research revenue will continue to be difficult to develop in 2007 according to new research from Screen Digest.

With sites such as YouTube leading the social media charge over the past year, it seems as the honeymoon period may be coming to an end, as Screen Digest suggests that while more than half of all video content will be user generated by 2010, finding a business model that will make them financially viable is a complicated matter.

According to Arash Amel, Screen Digest Senior Analyst and author of the report, “As yet…no one has found a way to make real money from the huge audiences who participate on these sites.”