Prices vary widely, from 70,000 rubles to 1 million or more per year. But is such an expense justified?
We asked marketers who run corporate blogs on external platforms to share their experiences. We were interested in how they organize their content production process, how much they spend on their corporate blog, and how satisfied they are with the results.
Ekaterina Vyrina, Public Relations Manager at ICL Services
At ICL Services, we've been running a corporate blog on Habr since way back in 2014. During this time, we've grown significantly in both our expertise and the number of authors we recruit to write specialized articles.
We prepare such materials in the PR department. I handle this primarily, working hand-in-hand with each expert. I curate the blog, and all articles we prepare undergo my review and full supervision, from the first drafts of ideas, headlines, and topics to the full text with images, tables, and memes, of course—that's sacred here.
Blogging isn't cheap. Currently, the minimum blog plan can cost upwards of 700,000 rubles per year, but there are more expensive options: all the information can be found on the platform's website. But if you purchase a blog like this, you can publish an unlimited number of articles, add an unlimited number of authors, and grant them publishing rights. This means your content isn't left in a sandbox (unsorted content from newbies), but is published immediately.
How are results measured on Habr?
There are several metrics: the number of views, the number of times an article has been bookmarked by different users, and, of course, "upvotes" and "downvotes"—akin to a like or dislike on any social network. The more upvotes, views, favorites, and bookmarks an article has, and the more people comment on it, the more reach it gets. Even negative ones. At the same time, an article has a chance to be featured in the "Currently Reading" section: any Habr user can see it and read the expert's article, thereby boosting its ratings even further.
Overall, Habr is a long-term PR tool for businesses. costa rica cell phone database We work to build brand awareness among potential clients, partners, and employees. We write not only about hardware and software, but also about project work and IT recruiting. As for direct results, we recently received a lead from an article we wrote with a leading systems architect about the use of one of Microsoft's remote connection technologies on a corporate scale. The client came to us and said, "Hello, we want to do the same." And this is just one of many examples.
Roman Dzhunusov, head of the internet marketing agency FireSEO
We've been involved in content marketing for a long time, running our own blogs to promote our services, as well as those of our partners and clients.
Subscribe to the FireSEO Telegram channel and stay up-to-date with new articles and posts on Telegram.
Corporate blogs on reputable platforms can generate traffic, leads, and sales. We've had advertising articles that continued to generate leads even after several years, but there are a few caveats:
Consistency is one of the keys to success
You can't expect one article a month to yield tangible results. Sometimes, good, expert articles simply get lost in the flood of articles, and almost no one sees them. The more you write, the greater your chances of getting noticed. The key is to maintain quality.
Try to optimize your articles for SEO . Even if it seems difficult to find keywords for an article, you can always find some low-frequency and targeted phrases. If you don't optimize for SEO, your only hope is that the site's audience will notice it immediately after publication and help boost it through reactions and comments. We've written in more detail here about which articles are best for quick results.
You need to choose the right platform for your blog, one that fits the topic, price, and hosting conditions. For example, we used to work extensively with vc.ru and had good results, but due to internal competition (many authors publishing articles on the same topics) and the administration's decision to block articles from indexing after the paid plan expires, we decided not to pay the corporate plan anymore.
For our blogs, the content is always written by relevant specialists and reviewed by an editor before publication. For client blogs, we select a writer with niche expertise and/or collaborate with experts on the client's side.