Compendium Survey Finds 80% of Business Blog Traffic Comes from First-Time Visitors

March 11, 2010; 11:11 AM

INDIANAPOLIS – March 11, 2010 – Compendium, an enterprise platform for social media and search, announced today the results of its Corporate Blogging and Social Media Trends Survey. For the survey Compendium gathered data from 266 companies about blogging traffic, visitor trends, and Twitter usage. The results counter the commonly held belief that business blogs have a core group of loyal readers. The Corporate Blogging and Social Media Trends Survey found that almost two-thirds of respondents reported more than 80 percent of all blog traffic was first time visitors.

“As more traffic is being driven to corporate blogs through organic searches and more first-time visitors are landing on blogs, companies need to develop blog and social media content that is appropriate for this audience in order to be effective,”  said Chris Baggott, CEO and co-founder of Compendium. “A keyword-optimized blogging and social media content strategy geared towards first-time visitors is a valuable tool for marketers to increase conversions.”

Business Blog Traffic = First-Time Visitors and Search Engine Referrals

Of the B-to-B companies surveyed, 64 percent said between 61 and 100 percent of visitors were first-timers. First time visitors come from two major sources, referring sites and search engines.  For companies selling to consumers, first-time blog traffic and traffic through search engines made up an even higher percentage of blog traffic, with almost three-quarters of the respondents reporting that 81-100 percent of blog traffic came from first time visitors and more than half indicating that 41 percent or more of traffic came through searches.

Twitter: Not Universal Yet; More Popular with B-to-B Companies

In addition to examining business blog trends, the survey also researched respondents’ use of Twitter. Overall, less than half (approximately 43 percent) of the companies surveyed had established a Twitter account. Twitter usage was highest among B-to-B companies with 87 percent maintaining an account.

Compendium Social Search Advisory Board

To explore the topic of blogging and social media for the enterprise through tools such as The Corporate Blogging and Social Media Trends survey, Compendium has created an Advisory Board of both social media and blogging experts. The members include Debbie Weil, Corporate Social Media Strategist and author of The Corporate Blogging Book (2010 Updated Edition); Chris Baggott, search-driven blogging expert and CEO of Compendium Blogware; Jay Baer, author of the Convince & Convert blog and Jason Falls, social media guru and author of the Social Media Explorer blog.

For more information, please visit www.compendium.com

About Compendium

Compendium is an online platform for enterprise social media and search. It provides businesses and organizations an easy way to create, manage and publish ongoing blog and social media content that appears and ranks highly in online searches. Co-founded by Chris Baggott, whose blog was voted “Best Online Marketing Blog” by MarketingSherpa readers and “Best of the Web” by Forbes, and Ali Sales, Compendium’s mission is to help organizations improve search results and drive sales opportunities through blogging and social media. Compendium was founded in 2007, and is based in Indianapolis. For more information on Compendium, visit www.compendium.com