Contrary to the widely held belief that the majority of business-related blog traffic is made up of loyal audiences, a recent study reveals just the opposite. Marketers must develop blog and social media content for first-time visitors in order to be effective, according to the survey conducted by Compendium, an enterprise platform for social media and search.

In data gathered from 266 companies about blogging traffic, visitor trends and Twitter usage, the Corporate Blogging and Social Media Trends Survey found that almost three-quarters of respondents from companies selling directly to consumers reported more than 80 percent of all blog traffic was from first-time visitors. More than half of those companies said 41 percent or more of the traffic came through searches.

“A keyword-optimized blogging and social media content strategy geared towards first-time visitors is a valuable tool for marketers to increase conversions,” said Compendium co-founder and CEO Chris Baggott. “More traffic is being driven to corporate blogs through organic searches and more first-time visitors are landing on blogs.”

Of the business-to-business companies surveyed, 64 percent said that between 61 and 100 percent of visitors were first-timers. The study also revealed that less than half of the companies surveyed (approximately 43 percent) had established a Twitter account. The B-to-B companies had the highest reported Twitter usage with 87 percent maintaining an account.

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