How Long To Scale Up A Blog

As the world of online marketing evolves, one thing is certain: consumers want to learn about brands from content rather than traditional ads.

But, as a small business marketer, you might panic when thinking about a content marketing strategy. After all, these tactics take time and resources to build out. Content marketing also requires you to create a number of assets, such as video, images, or other high-quality content without knowing if it will yield an ROI.

If you're building out a scalable content marketing strategy, one great place to start is by setting up or improving a business blog. Blogs allow you to publish lower-maintenance content, gain search traffic to your site, discuss your product, and show your expertise on industry topics.

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If you already have a blog, you can also easily use it to scale up your content marketing efforts. This is because you can use the platform to publish and experiment with new blog formats -- such as video or infographics.

Blogging is such a scalable and affordable approach that it's the third-most-common content marketing strategy for businesses. And, marketers that prioritize blogging see 13-times the ROI of businesses that don't.

But, with any content marketing strategy comes challenges that you'll need to keep in mind.

Although it's easier to craft blog posts than it is to roll out a huge multichannel marketing campaign, you'll still need to understand the barriers that come with your blog audience. This could include low attention-spans, a need for easily-skimmable content, and their growing interest in content that has additional assets like graphics and videos.

To show you the benefits of blogging, and better prepare you for its challenges, here are 31 stats you should keep in mind when planning your 2020 strategy.

General Blogging Facts

There are over 600 million active blogs globally in 2020. (Growth Badger)
53% of bloggers are 21 to 35 years old. (Daily Infographic)
Half of the top 200 Fortune 500 companies had a corporate blog in 2018. (Daily Infographic)
Blogging talent is growing. Roughly 32 million people in the U.S. are bloggers -- up by 10 million since 2014. (Statista)
In 2018, Huffington Post's blog earned $14 million in monthly revenue. (Daily Infographic)
There were more bloggers in California than all of Canada by 2018. (Daily Infographic)
English is the most popular blogging language. (Daily Infographic)

The Benefits of Business Blogging

80% of internet users interact with both social media sites and blogs. (DemandMetric)
59% of marketers find blogging valuable. (DemandMetric)
Blogs can result in a 434% increase inindexed pages and a 97% increase in indexed links. (DemandMetric)
Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don't blog. (DemandMetric)

blogging leads per month Source

Blogging is the third most common content marketing strategy, after video and eBooks. (HubSpot)
In 2018, 55% of marketers listed blogging as their top priority. (HubSpot)
90% of businesses use content marketing tactics, such as blogging. (DemandMetric)
Businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don't. (HubSpot)

Marketers who prioritized blogging received 13X more ROI than companies that did not in 2019. (HubSpot)
88% of bloggers who gate content report some/strong results from blogging (35% of them report strong results). (OrbitMedia)

value of blogging

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70% of people would rather learn about a company through articles rather than advertisements. (DemandMetric)

In 2019, 77% of marketers were focusing on written content. (HubSpot)

Writing, Formatting, and Posting

In 2019, bloggers spent 65% more time writing blog posts, with the average post taking three hours and 57 minutes to write. (Orbit Media)
40% of content marketers say original visuals, such as infographics, perform best in their articles. (Venngage)
The average blog post is 1,236 words. (Orbit Media)
Many business bloggers argue that listicles, or list articles, are the most popular blog post format. (HubSpot)
55% of bloggers say they see results from blog posts with 2,000 words or more. (Orbit Media)

blogging results based on content length

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Blog content with images receives 94% more views. (Social Media Today)
88% of marketers use visuals in more than 50% of their blog articles. (Venngage)
While only 75% of bloggers that place 10 or more photos in an article say it's effective, only 3% of bloggers actually do this. (Orbit Media)

least common and most effective blogging tasks

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Blogging Challenges

52% of bloggers say it's getting harder to engage with readers through their content. (Orbit Media)
Although content creators say that producing original visuals provides results, 35% say they struggle with creating this content consistently. (Venngage) The chart below highlights content creators' biggest struggles when it comes to implementing visual content in articles:

The biggest struggles of content creators with blogging

Source

43% of people admit to skimming blog posts. (HubSpot)
Buffer, a marketing blog site, recently revealed that 55% of its visitors only read articles for 15 seconds or less. (Buffer)

Building a Successful Blog

Now that you've seen the benefits of running a business blog, you might be eager to get one started on your site or improve upon your current blog.

Regardless of where you are in blog development, be sure to brainstorm ideas for interesting posts that keep your buyer persona in mind, optimize your web content for SEO, and follow other best-practices that have led businesses to gain ROI from their online content.

Want more success tips on how to be a better blogger? Check out this post with tips from HubSpot's own blog team.

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Originally published May 11, 2020 12:00:00 PM, updated February 04 2021