Lessons from the Próbakő IdeaBank
Blogging? No, we will never do that! – this is roughly what we thought when we revamped the Próbakő Kommunikáció website about two years ago. We would just upload a couple of basic pieces of information about the company and that would be it. This was more or less the original plan, which soon changed. New content ideas kept coming, some of which we quickly dismissed, while we couldn't resist others. The end result was that the original anti-blogging attitude was gradually replaced by the excitement of a budding blogger. The Próbakő IdeaBank was born.
The background of the launch
Following the initial resistance, several factors motivated us to launch the blog. On one hand, we saw numerous excellent examples among the members of our agency network, the Worldcom Public Relations Group. On the other hand, we felt that after spending fifteen years in the domestic market and over a decade in the Worldcom network, we had accumulated a wealth of experience. We have seen and continue to see many Hungarian and international examples that we would love to share with others – even initiating professional debates. In short: we have something to say about the communication profession. Of course, we also knew that a professional blog would greatly assist in positioning our company.
Basic data
We revamped our company website, the www.probako.hu site more than 2 years ago. The IdeaBank first post was born about a year ago, last October, when I was on my way home from the annual EMEA meeting of the agency network held in Helsinki. So far, we have posted a total of 24 materials, which means that new text has been uploaded to the site approximately every two weeks. In connection with the blog, we also launched a newsletter this February (we have prepared four "issues" so far), and we use the posts in our LinkedIn communication as well.
Results
The most important result regarding the blog itself is that it significantly increased the traffic to our company website and its usage. Compared to the period before the blog, it is evident that the number of users increased by 130 percent, the number of sessions by 150 percent, the number of page views by 170 percent, and the time spent on the site showed a 50 percent increase.
The newsletter related to the blog has also yielded good results. It produces an average open rate of 40 percent, and the click-through rate hovers around 12%. Among the reasons for this is that we do not bombard subscribers with sales messages, but provide them with valuable, useful content.
Lessons learned
Overall, it can be said that the IdeaBank has met our expectations so far. The posting frequency does not overwhelm the staff at all (one of the basic flaws of corporate professional blogs is that after the initial enthusiasm, the energy runs out within a few months, and not many new contents are created). The audience responds well to the posts, the results of the newsletter are also good, and occasionally we have managed to generate interesting professional debates on LinkedIn as well. The blog has supported our own search engine optimization activities, and it is also an excellent platform for experimenting with new solutions that can later be transferred to client work.
The blog, and our communication becoming more active with its help, has also had a positive impact on our employer branding: those interested in our company have recently been able to gain much better insight into our operations and way of thinking.
Onward to the IdeaBank!
