Ninth Annual Blogging Survey Just Released
It Says Blogging Still Works
Each year, Orbit Media, a leading web design and content marketing firm based in Chicago, releases its annual Blogging Survey.
The gist of the survey is to identify what works and what does not when it comes to blogging, also known as content marketing.
Today, virtually all organizations in scores of industries have content marketing programs in place.
This year, the survey involved more than 1,016 respondents. When asked, does blogging work in 2022, 80 percent said yes. They either get “some results” or “strong results.”
Some of the other findings include the following:
- In 2014, bloggers said it took about two hours to write a blog. By 2022, that jumped to four hours. The main reason for this: blogs are getting longer. In 2014, they averaged eight hundred words. Today, they average 1,375 words.
- As to publishing frequency, in 2014, most published two to six blogs per week. Today, that number is closer to once per week. Again, because so much more time is spent writing each post.
- Ninety percent of bloggers promote their posts using social media. Sixty-six percent use search engine optimization techniques or email marketing.
- Bloggers that collaborate with “influencers” report getting solid results. An influencer is a leader in a field that can influence purchasing decisions.
- While paying to promote a blog on social media is effective, the number of bloggers using paid promotion is declining from 30 percent in 2016 to just ten percent today.
- Forty-five percent of the respondents said that taking the time to do keyword research (researching key phrases for every article) “always” pays off.
- The study also found that not all content has to be new. Seventy-three percent of the bloggers said they are updating and repackaging old content and that it is sometimes getting better results than the original blog post.
- One in four bloggers now add videos to their content. However, this is down from 2019 when a third added video.
- While bloggers publish less often than in the past, those that post 2 to 6 times per week report better results.
The big takeaway: Blogging still works. It just takes longer, requires more work, but is still a worthwhile investment for B2B organizations.
Details of the Blogging Survey:
- Responses were gathered from August to September 2022
- The bloggers are individuals, not groups of people.
- Most are B2B marketers
- The term “results” implies different things to different bloggers based on their blogging goals. It can imply, for instance, improved SEO, more site visitors, more leads or more sales.
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