Blog

A blog.

Once considered a strange concept, the idea of blogging is now hardly foreign to most elderly people without computers.

Blogging has all but replaced physical magazines, and it’s flipped the journalism field on its side. Anyone can create articles and post them online, from posts with funny baseball game videos to detailed tutorials about how to launch a website.

“Content is king,” is the cliche quote that people come up with when arguing about the future of blogging; and it’s true, at least for some companies.

When considering blogging, most companies use it for one of two reasons: As a primary money making source, or to compliment a business by pushing traffic to other service or product pages.

When building an online magazine or blog that prints articles about sports, technology, gadgets, home gardening, cooking or whatever other topics you can think of, blogging is clearly an essential part of success.

But what about those businesses that use blogging as a way to boost profits elsewhere in the organization?

This is the big question that most companies have. Is launching a blog really going to work for my business?

The short answer is yes.

However, investing time and money into blogging is a tough starting point. All WordPress templates are fitted with blog areas, so you’re set there; but will the whole process of generating blog content yield you more money in the long run?

Heck, blogging may sound simple at first, but it really entails a more complex sequence of steps:

• Hiring writers or writing yourself.
• Finding topics that people are bound to read.
• Spending the money or time to get the article written and edited.
• Formatting the content and publishing it.
• Sending out emails and links to other distribution networks like social media.
• Revitalizing the content so that it still helps your company in the long run.

As you can see, blogging requires work, and this work is often intimidating for companies, particularly small businesses with minimal budget flexibility and few writers to turn to.

A direct answer to whether or not blogging is important for your company’s success is not exactly possible.

However, we can take a moment to analyze businesses that have had success when blogging to promote other facets of their organization.

With these case studies, we’ll look at the successful online businesses and see how much they use blogging.

We’ll outline what type of content is focused on, along with whether or not the posts are shared a lot and discussed by customers.

The overall goal is to evaluate the returns you may accumulate with a well thought-out blogging plan.

So, keep reading to examine a series of case studies from real companies in the WordPress industry.

WPBeginner

The WPbeginner website is a hodge podge of articles, links, tutorials, products and even some services. The first time I started reading WPBeginner, I didn’t really understand how the site made any money. They seemed to constantly offer free WordPress migrations, free comprehensive blog posts and some video tutorials for learning about the WordPress platform.

Well, it turns out WPBeginner has some enterprise clients, and the blog also uses affiliate links to accumulate some money.

The WPBeginner Blog is one of the best WordPress resources online, and it consistently pops up at the top of Google when searching for WordPress related topics.

What Type of Content is Shared on the Blog?

WPBeginner puts lots of the focus on mini tutorials for quickly tweaking parts of the WordPress interface. From changing colors on an address bar to migrating from another platform to WordPress, these tutorials stick to the necessities, without striving for super long articles or unnecessary content.

The categories are as follows. Notice how all of the blog posts align with the products sold to WPBeginner customers:

• Beginners Guides
• Events
• News
• Opinion
• Showcase
• Themes
• Tutorials
• WordPress plugins

Are Shares and Comments Prominent?

Social sharing is extremely prominent on the WPBeginner blog, so it’s clear that blogging is doing quite a bit to get the word out for the company.

Even when I click on the most recent article with zero comments, I see around 88 Facebook likes and 9 Google + shares.

At the time of this article, the first page of the blog has a few articles with 14, 9 and 5 comments. You’ll notice that many of the WPBeginner posts have zero comments, but that’s often on quick tutorials where no discussion is required.

One thing to take away from the WPBeginner blog is that the team is fairly good at responding to comments, offering an additional form of customer support, while also building a community through the blog.

How Does the Company Use Blogging to Yield Returns?

As stated before, WPBeginner has enterprise web development clients, but much of the traffic through this blog is designed to circulate for other reasons.

When you scroll through any of the articles, you see that related posts are suggested at the bottom, while internal links are scattered all over the place.

Email acquisition is huge for WPBeginner, as the blog boasts almost 400,000 subscribers. And it’s clear why these numbers are so high, considering a free video course is given away in exchange for the email addresses.

Finally, WPBeginner links to many affiliate products, which has become an easy way to accumulate income through a blog. In addition, the company makes its own plugins, all of which have become extremely popular. So, does the blog have anything to do with the success of WPBeginner? Yeah, absolutely.

Premium WPMUDEV

Premium WPMUDEV is an established company selling high quality themes and plugins. It also has a jobs board, which may be helpful for some developers out there. Since Premium WPMUDEV makes money first with its products, this is an interesting case study, because the blog is not the first piece of content created.

Therefore, the Premium WPMU DEV blog is only around to promote products or services.

The WPMU DEV blog offers strong articles from interesting writers, but we like this example for those companies that are primarily interested in blogging for its marketing value.

What Type of Content is Shared on the Blog?

Premium WPMUDEV has articles talking about WordPress, multisite functionality, BuddyPress, tutorials and community-based discussions.

Themes, plugins and development tutorials are all discussed, with certain roundups, unique takes on the industry and various other thoughts that go through the offices at Premium WPMUDEV.

Since the company sells job listings, plugins and themes, it’s reasonable that they provide solutions for developers, while linking to tools and methods that are sold through the company. The articles are designed to sell Premium WPMUDEV products and services.

Are Shares and Comments Prominent?

Although social share counts don’t show up on the blog posts, users do have the option to share an article with friends if they like it. Seeing as how the over 42k Facebook followers are fairly active with sharing blog posts on Facebook, this is a great indicator that the social world is combining well with the Premium WPMU DEV blog.

Many of the blog posts have from 5 to 15 comments, and the responses are articulate and useful to all users, considering these are real customers who have a vested interest in learning. Premium WPMUDEV occasionally publishes articles announcing giveaways, which can get up to around 200 comments.

It’s results like these that show blogging is a wonderful tool for boosting traffic and making customers happy.

How Does the Company Use Blogging to Yield Returns?

The end of each blog article includes additional links for people to click on. For example, they can move onto a related article, pushing them deeper into the sales funnel. Right beneath the related articles sit a few images and links to themes and plugins for sale.

There you have it. With each blog post comes a pitch to make more money. And the more views that post gets, the better chances the company has of making that sale.

Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine is a blog in itself, but the company has chosen to expand into a wide variety of money-making schemes, considering the blog has seen rapid success over the past many years.

What Type of Content is Shared on the Blog?

I like to think of Smashing Magazine as the Huffington Post for developers and designers. You can find lots of content for coding, design, responsiveness, typography, mobile design, graphics, UX design and WordPress.

If it relates to digital design, you can bet it’s on the Smashing Magazine website. However, this is a magazine that had a plan for becoming monetized from the start. Although the articles are the main product, the company has blurred the lines to the point where it’s tough to figure out if they primarily sell great articles or job listings.

Are Shares and Comments Prominent?

Smashing Magazine is hugely popular in the social media world, with almost 1 million followers on Twitter and 272k on Facebook. The social share counts are not revealed on the articles, but many of the more popular ones have hundreds, if not thousands of likes and retweets on the actual social accounts.

Every Time someone shares a blog post it increases the potential of an item being bought through the Smashing Magazine site.

The comments are rather consistent, with seven comments on the screenshot above, and anywhere between two and 15 comments when glancing at the first page of the blog.

How Does the Company Use Blogging to Yield Returns?

The consistency of sharing and commenting yields some sweet results for the Smashing Magazine company, because it has a chance to market its Books, on a consistent basis. Not only is there an eBook and Book tab right above each blog post, but links and buttons to the guides are littered throughout the blog.

Events are marketed with blog posts as well, even if they are squeezed in with a simple link at the end of a tutorial.

Finally, Smashing Magazine sells job listings to companies interested in hiring the top designers and developers out there. Since it’s so popular, they can charge a decent amount, and the blog is a natural funnel for beginners or intermediates who are learning about development, then graduating into the job market.

WPEngine

WPEngine serves as an interesting study, because it sells boring services and tools. That’s not to say that hosting and security are unneeded, but it gives companies a good perspective as to how they should utilize a blog for an industry that most would consider less exciting. For a 20% discount to WPEngine plans follow this link. Special for our Readers.

What Type of Content is Shared on the Blog?

The WP Engine blog touches on a few different areas, considering the company knows that customers are developers, entrepreneurs and business managers of varying skill levels. Some articles cover tips for making your WordPress site more useful (like a checklist for a brand new website,) while others highlight news from the industry or images from recent tech events, like SXSW.

As you may have realized, hosting companies have a little more leeway when developing content for blogs, but the goal is to make the articles fun, engaging and useful so that customers have a reason to stop by and remember how great your company is.

After all, it’s easy to forget about a company that is making things work behind the scenes.

Are Shares and Comments Prominent?

A handful of shares and likes can be found when blog posts are listed on the WPEngine Facebook page. It seems like the more personal articles (like photo galleries from events) get better receptions.

Sharing counts aren’t offered but the company boasts 25k followers on Twitter and 12k on Facebook.

What’s interesting is that although the Facebook activity is a little low, WPEngine gets quite a few retweets and favorites through Twitter, considering it’s more of a B2B business.

How Does the Company Use Blogging to Yield Returns?

A banner is constantly displayed towards the bottom of the WPEngine site. It asks customers to contact them, or to click and chat with a support rep.

Therefore, seeing as how this is a hosting company, the WP Engine blog seems to be used mainly for both support and sales.

Yoast

If you’ve tried the most popular SEO plugin on the WordPress market, you know about the Yoast company. However, did you know that Yoast is not in the business of making free plugins? It actually has a beautiful money-making strategy, with the blog integrated right into the mix.

What Type of Content is Shared on the Blog?

The Yoast SEO blog actually states exactly what type of content is shared towards the top of the blog.

As you can see in the screenshot, users expect to read articles about analytics, eCommerce, SEO, social media and more. Since the Yoast company mainly sells plugins, all of this makes perfect sense.

Are Shares and Comments Prominent?

The Yoast blog sees anywhere from five to 60 comments on a blog post, and that’s just looking at the first page. It’s mighty impressive to see a company, known for its SEO plugin, with such an active blog feed.

The social shares are not there for us to analyze, but the Yoast Twitter page gets a decent amount of likes and retweets when one of the blog articles are posted through the social network.

How Does the Company Use Blogging to Yield Returns?

To my surprise, Yoast does more than make plugins. It actually has a few video training modules, which are sold for high prices. It’s not clear how many people sign up for these training videos, but blog posts are known to promote the training sessions, especially when the blog post touches on a small part of a more in-depth topic.

Various eBooks are peddled through the Yoast blog too.

Finally, the Yoast blog works as a support thread and a sales module for those who implement the many popular Yoast plugins. For example, webmasters are constantly trying to improve in SEO. If they use the Yoast SEO plugin, they are likely to follow the Yoast blog to learn about how to gain more exposure with the plugin.

What Do You Think? Is Blogging Important to the Success of Your Company?

How does your blogging strategy intertwine with the way you make money? Do you have a strategy for grabbing customers who land on your blog posts? Do you have a plan for converting them into paying customers? Would you consider your company to be a little less interesting than others? How can you counter that with a blog?

Overall, blogging is indeed for everyone, since you’re bound to generate conversation and populate the internet with quality ideas that lead back to your own products or services.

If you have some blogging suggestions for other companies, or would like to share how important blogging is to your company’s success, drop a line in the comments section below.