16 Statistics On How Blogging Gives Your Business a Competitive Advantage

Is blogging dead?

This is likely not the first time you’ve found yourself asking this question, and it probably won’t be the last. With much bigger things going on in the media these past couple of years — and with many companies seemingly more focused on the shift to remote work than anything else — discussions regarding the advantages of blogging for business have trickled off. The silence regarding the subject may concern you, but worry not.

Blogging maintains a secure role in the B2B and B2C landscape and, for companies that engage in consistent blogging efforts, it gives them a competitive advantage. We’re not just saying this to advance our own interests, either.

There are dozens of statistics that support our assertion. You can use the data to not only blog on with confidence but also to guide your future content marketing efforts.

To understand the full benefits of blogging, it may help to look at the numbers. We have split the data into separate categories based on how you can use it. So, without further ado, check out the top data-backed reasons you should maintain or increase your blogging efforts in 2022.

1.  Businesses that blog consistently are 13x more likely to achieve a positive ROI than those that do not

If you have a limited marketing budget, know that blogging is one of the most effective and cheapest ways to advertise your business. Businesses that blog are 13 times more likely to achieve a positive ROI for their efforts than those that do not.

Moreover, websites with active blogs have 434% more indexed pages and 97% more inbound links than those that don’t. Inbound links boost a website’s authority, which is a major page-ranking factor. More indexed pages means more opportunities to rank.

2. Businesses with active blogs receive 55% more visitors

The whole purpose of maintaining a website is to attract new and existing customers. With more visitors, you have increased opportunities to generate high-quality leads and convert them into paying customers. Consistent blogging can help you attract as many as 55% more visitors than if you were to cease your efforts.

Worried about how to produce that much content consistently? Our monthly SEO packages are the perfect solution.

3. As of January 2022, 600 million blogs exist on a global scale

To understand the sheer magnitude of blogging, it may help to know that, as of January 2022, 600 million blogs existed worldwide. Every year, those blogs post a combined 3 billion new articles. This amounts to approximately 8.28 million blogs per day and 5,750 blogs per minute. What these numbers should tell you is not only that blogging is alive and well, but your competitors are also blogging so you should be, too.

Where are people blogging, though? Tumblr alone is home to 540.4 million blogs. WordPress sees 70 million new blog posts monthly and approximately 77 million new comments.

4. Approximately 91% of marketers use blogging as the basis of or to complement their other marketing efforts

As of 2018, as many as 85% of B2C marketers and 91% of B2B marketers were using a blog as the foundation for their marketing efforts or to complement additional marketing efforts. That same year, 55% of marketers said they planned to make blogging a top marketing priority, 57% said they planned to increase blogging efforts and 96% said they expected to increase their content marketing budgets in 2019. If any statistics can affirmatively answer your question, “Is blogging dead?” these are it.

5. 70% of consumers prefer to learn about a company through a blog rather than an advertisement

If you’re not yet sold on the advantages of blogging for business, consider audience preferences. According to DemandMetric, 70% of consumers would rather learn about a company through a blog than a traditional advertisement. There are several other stats that support this overreaching one:

• 80% of people appreciate learning about a company through custom content.
• 68% of people say they read content from brands they like.
• 70% of readers claim to feel more connected to a brand after reading its content, while 82% feel more positive about a brand that publishes custom content.
• 90% of people find custom content useful, and 60% feel inspired to make a purchase or take the desired action after reading custom content.

Finally, it may help to know that 86% of people skip TV advertisements. While TV advertisement may not be in your company’s budget, this final stat encompasses consumers’ true feelings about traditional advertising.

6. 60% of internet users engage with blogs weekly

Though it took a while for the world to take blogs seriously, today, the publications have become a main source of information for most people. Now, 60% of the global population engages with at least one type of blog weekly. A stunning 39% engage with blogs thrice weekly, and 10% read blogs four to six times per week. Another 11% of consumers read and engage with blogs daily.

Blogging Statistics To Guide Your Approach To Blogging

Now that you know the “why” and “what” of blogging, it’s time to discuss the “how.” Use the following statistics to inform your content marketing strategy.

13. Compounding blog posts contribute to 38% of blog traffic

Per one study, just one in 10 blog posts is a compounding blog post. Despite this dismal statistic, compounding blog posts account for 38% of the total global blog traffic.

What is a compounding blog post, though? According to HubSpot, a compounding blog post is one whose traffic increases over time rather than decays. The traffic on a non-compounding post, on the other hand, surges upon publication but only declines from there. Though a single compounding post may not be a blockbuster hit on its opening weekend, it can generate as much traffic as six decaying posts within just six months of its publication date. The number of visits on a compounding post can continue to grow for years after its publication.

HubSpot provides a detailed how-to for creating compounding posts.

14. Bloggers today spend roughly 4 hours creating each post

One way in which to create a compounding post is to spend time on the writing process. Eight years ago, the average amount of time bloggers spent on blog creation was 2.5 hours. Today, that time commitment has increased by 63%, to three hours and 55 minutes.

Additional research reveals that bloggers who spend more time on the writing process see better results. For example, 31% of bloggers who spent six or more hours on a single article were satisfied with the ROI of their efforts, compared with just 14% of bloggers who dedicated less than one hour to the writing process.

15. Daily blogging yields the best results

How frequently should you be blogging to realize the full advantages of blogging for business? The answer depends on how many resources you have to dedicate to the task. However, studies show that daily posting yields the best results.

Of course, most SMBs do not have the time nor the manpower to post daily. For this reason, only 18% of bloggers admit to posting that often. Yet, if you can afford to do so, more frequent publishing is better.

Businesses that blog at least 16 times per month generate 3.5 times the amount of traffic and 4.5 times more leads than those that publish between zero and four times per month. Of the companies that post several times a week, 21% say they see “strong results.”

Be wary of inconsistent posting, however. When you publish at irregular intervals, you can unwittingly contribute to the decline of your blog’s performance by as much as 15%.

16. 30% of companies that refurbish their blogs see better results

What if you don’t have time to create new blogs for publication multiple times a week? Consider breathing new life into old articles by refurbishing them. As many as 70% of bloggers use this technique and, of those, 30% say their articles perform better the second time around.

Blogging Is Alive and Well, But Is Yours?

Blogging is not dead, and the advantages of blogging for business are still there. In fact, as consumers desire more information from the brands with which they do business, the benefits of blogging will only continue to grow.

If it’s been a while since you’ve contributed to your blog for whatever reason, take steps to change that today. If you need help, invest in our blog writing services to begin building up your content library.

Blogging Statistics To Guide Blog Creation

In addition to helping you feel confident that blogging is not, in fact, dead, we want the stats we present to you to help guide your efforts in some way. We want you to understand not just why you should be blogging but also, how you should be going about it.

7. The perfect headline is 6-13 words in length

The headline you choose for your blog article can make or break its success. According to the data, your headline should be of a certain length and style. The perfect headline length is between six and 13 words, which amounts to 50 to 60 characters. If the title is too long, or if it’s not catchy, there is little chance internet users will click through to read it.

Certain types of headlines perform better than others. For instance, question headlines receive 23% more shares than non-question headlines. Headlines that utilize numbers and facts receive 206% more clicks than those that do not. By simply including a colon or hyphen in your headline, you can increase your click-through-rates by 9%. For more advice on how to create clickable headlines, check out our article, The Art of Creating Attention-Grabbing Titles.

8. The average length of page-one blog posts is 1,447 words

Several statistics reveal that longer blog posts increasingly outperform those that are 500 words or less (the old standard). The average length of blog posts that rank on the first page of the SERPs is 1,447 words. However, the optimal blog post length is much higher.

In some industries, such as finance, the optimal blog post length is between 2,250 and 2,500 words. Blogs with wordcounts that fall within this range receive the most organic B2B traffic.

However, 54% of marketers reported that they see the best results with blogs that have 3,000 or more words. An additional 40% of marketers said they generate promising results with blogs of between 2,000 and 3,000 words. However, only 11% of bloggers who regularly publish short-form articles — meaning, those with 500 words or less — revealed they are happy with their results.

9. Long-form articles generate more than 75% backlinks and 9x more leads than short-form blogs

One of the advantages of blogging for business is that it helps generate organic traffic via several means, one of which is backlinks. Long-form articles generate as much as 77.2% more backlinks than short-form ones.

More organic traffic means more leads. Long-form articles help websites gain 9x more leads than websites that focus their efforts on short-form blog creation.

10. 34% of people desire how-to posts and 60% of older adults want more news-based articles

People are becoming increasingly picky about the types of articles they want to see. Given that 80% of Google searches are informational, tutorial and how-to posts are the number one type of article people want to see. The data backs this assertion up.

When asked why they read blogs, 34% of respondents said it was to learn how to do something or to become informed on a given topic. Just 20% of respondents said they read blogs for entertainment purposes, 12% said they read them to catch up on industry trends or news, and 4% said they hope to learn more about a product or brand via blogs.

The types of blogs people want to see vary between demographics. For instance, nearly 60% of older adults said they desire more news-based articles whereas Millennials prefer more social content and video content.

11. 77% of marketers publish how-to articles

If you hope to use your blog to set yourself apart from the competition, it’s important to know what type of content your competition is posting. Slightly more than three-quarters of marketers are giving people what they want in the form of how-to articles. With listicles being the second most popular type of article consumed, 57% of bloggers publish list posts. Another 47% cater to older adults by publishing articles that focus on industry trends and news, and 43% publish eBooks and long-form guides.

12. 39% of bloggers use 10 or more images in their publications

Humans are visual creatures, so it makes sense that online content with photos performs better than content without visuals. While not a blog statistic per se, one study shows that 93% of the top-performing Facebook posts contain imagery. HubSpot attributes this to the “picture superiority effect,” which basically states that images encode information onto our memories in a more concrete way than text can.

It appears that most bloggers understand the significance of imagery in marketing. As many as 90% of marketers include imagery in their blogs posts, with roughly 40% saying that 10 or more images yield the best results. Another 37% incorporate contributor quotes, and 54% supplement their images with visual statistics.

The takeaway here is that imagery matters. Check out our blog to learn how to use images more effectively in your marketing.

Blogging Statistics To Guide Your Approach To Blogging

Now that you know the “why” and “what” of blogging, it’s time to discuss the “how.” Use the following statistics to inform your content marketing strategy.

13. Compounding blog posts contribute to 38% of blog traffic

Per one study, just one in 10 blog posts is a compounding blog post. Despite this dismal statistic, compounding blog posts account for 38% of the total global blog traffic.

What is a compounding blog post, though? According to HubSpot, a compounding blog post is one whose traffic increases over time rather than decays. The traffic on a non-compounding post, on the other hand, surges upon publication but only declines from there. Though a single compounding post may not be a blockbuster hit on its opening weekend, it can generate as much traffic as six decaying posts within just six months of its publication date. The number of visits on a compounding post can continue to grow for years after its publication.

HubSpot provides a detailed how-to for creating compounding posts.

14. Bloggers today spend roughly 4 hours creating each post

One way in which to create a compounding post is to spend time on the writing process. Eight years ago, the average amount of time bloggers spent on blog creation was 2.5 hours. Today, that time commitment has increased by 63%, to three hours and 55 minutes.

Additional research reveals that bloggers who spend more time on the writing process see better results. For example, 31% of bloggers who spent six or more hours on a single article were satisfied with the ROI of their efforts, compared with just 14% of bloggers who dedicated less than one hour to the writing process.

15. Daily blogging yields the best results

How frequently should you be blogging to realize the full advantages of blogging for business? The answer depends on how many resources you have to dedicate to the task. However, studies show that daily posting yields the best results.

Of course, most SMBs do not have the time nor the manpower to post daily. For this reason, only 18% of bloggers admit to posting that often. Yet, if you can afford to do so, more frequent publishing is better.

Businesses that blog at least 16 times per month generate 3.5 times the amount of traffic and 4.5 times more leads than those that publish between zero and four times per month. Of the companies that post several times a week, 21% say they see “strong results.”

Be wary of inconsistent posting, however. When you publish at irregular intervals, you can unwittingly contribute to the decline of your blog’s performance by as much as 15%.

16. 30% of companies that refurbish their blogs see better results

What if you don’t have time to create new blogs for publication multiple times a week? Consider breathing new life into old articles by refurbishing them. As many as 70% of bloggers use this technique and, of those, 30% say their articles perform better the second time around.

Blogging Is Alive and Well, But Is Yours?

Blogging is not dead, and the advantages of blogging for business are still there. In fact, as consumers desire more information from the brands with which they do business, the benefits of blogging will only continue to grow.

If it’s been a while since you’ve contributed to your blog for whatever reason, take steps to change that today. If you need help, invest in our blog writing services to begin building up your content library.