As we left the first quarter of 2012 behind us I couldn't help notice that I hadn't blogged since the end of January.  Two months had passed, in the blink of an eye, and the blogosphere had not received an update from me.  Well that is not strictly true.  After all, almost every day I check for industry specific news and broadcast to all who follow on Twitter and LinkedIn.  Our marketing department also ensures that we post to Facebook on an (almost) daily basis to share with you the going on's at O'Neil Software. On top of those, I do write the monthly eNewsletter and, as a group, we contribute to conferences and magazines.

So do we need to blog on top of all of that?  Some recent statistics say yes, and also imply that we are not alone in having a company blog. In fact, Technorati claims that some 70% of businesses are blogging, but according to a recent analysis of websites and blogs by Percussion only 20.5% of mid market companies have an active blog. It is that inactivity that is the trap to avoid as nothing looks worse than an out-of-date blog.

All this begs the question: how important is a blog to your business?  I thought I would take a look at our read statistics and found the following:

• The average "reads" was 660 per blog entry;
• The highest was over 1200;
• The simpler the title to understand, the more reads the article got (so don't be too clever with the title);
• Educational blogs were the most read.

I think any effort that I can do that reaches out to an average of 660 people is an effort well spent.  If I can focus that effort onto educational pieces, about our products and services, then that is even better, especially as the statistics show that these are the best read articles. 

Although blogging may not be too regular, I will keep it on the list of things to do. 

How about you?  Do you blog to your clients?  What do you find successful?  Go to our user forum at http://www.oneilsoft.com/user-forum/topic?id=1297 and let us know what you think.