Building your case for blogging

Many people I talk to about Compendium are trying to build the case for their company to start or refine their business blog.  It's not always an easy task, so I thought I would share exactly how I (as a sales professional) see value in our company blog.   As I checked out my inbound lead queue this morning in Salesfoce, I was pleasantly surprised by this:

Now this does not reflect qualification of these leads, but it does demonstrate that our blog drives traffic and many of these visitors see value in the content and resources we offer, taking our calls-to-action, like requesting demos or downloading white papers. These are the people for whom we work everyday to build a better product and help solve their content marketing challenges. 

At Compendium, we are currently in the process of remapping our marketing automation software, Eloqua, to help us deliver even greater value to the companies that find us on our blog but are not ready for a demo or conversation with a sales person.  Soon, we will be able to properly assess where a prospect is in their knowledge and process around business blogging and automatically provide them valuable content and resources. 

From this, I hope the value of a business blog is clear.  It is an easy and powerful way to create valuable content for your target audience.  A well optimized blog will help drive online traffic. If you offer helpful resources and clear calls-to-action, your blog becomes a powerful component of your demand/lead generation strategy as well.  What other tips can help a marketer build a strong case for launching a company blog?