The Blogging ROI: Charlene Li has a new report out, The ROI of Blogging: The "Why" and "How" of External Blog Accountability, that outlines the basic benefits of corporate engagement with the market through blogs. Here's Charlene's summary of the benefits and the metrics she is looking at to measure the value of each of those benefits:

Source: Forrester

Social Media Traffic? Sally Falkow at Bulldog Daily Reporter suggests that social media traffic "may not be what you need," citing search's current dominance. This may be true today, but that is because search is the established foundation for discovery of information today. She points to a posting we linked to last week by Matt Bailey. Yet, as the article points out, the best traffic comes from people making explicit recommendations--in other words, social activity built on linking. Also, note all the social recommendation site flare at the end of the posting. It confirms where we are going.

Big Business is on the way. The University of Massachussetts Dartmouth conducted a study that finds two out of three Inc. 500 companies now see social media as "very important" or "somewhat important" to their marketing strategies. But the learning curve remains: Only 42 percent of reespondents are "very familiar" with the tools of social media. Via J.D. and Hugo Martin.