The recent findings from Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report indicate that many digital marketing departments might be focusing on the wrong channels.  

The report looks into customer behavior online, but here is the key point we’d like to focus on: blogs. Do you have one? You should. Blogs were reported in the study to outrank all social networks when it comes to their ability to influence consumers.  You may still be telling yourself that other social spaces are more important and that somehow these finding don’t apply to your industry. Wrong, and here's why.

No matter where you are sourcing content for your social media, you're sending traffic to somebody else’s conversion pipeline if you don’t have your own blog. That or you aren’t doing a great job of developing your social media, since the whole goal is to push traffic into your sales pipeline and turn those leads into conversions.

If you have a blog, all of the content that you share through social media can be housed on your website, which puts viewers that much closer to a point of sale. The statistic from the 2013 Digital Influence Report wasn’t focused on this aspect though. What the statistic actually shows is that content-viewing consumers are more influenced by blog posts than by other forms platforms.  This is because the option to buy is so much closer to the user. The bottom line is that if as the statistics show you are one of the majority who places time money and energy in other places first, it might be a good time to rethink your strategy.

Check out the full report here and see how your digital marketing sizes up.