Content marketers promise businesses that blog posts will lead to more traffic, higher engagement, and better conversion rates. While that’s all true, there is one caveat that’s often left unsaid: Companies only get these results if they are blogging often enough. Dive into the data to find out if you’re blogging often enough to see the promised payoff.
How Often Should a Business Blog?
Any amount of blogging will make a positive difference, but higher rates of blogging correlate with higher website traffic. Companies that blog 16 or more times per month receive approximately 3.5 times more visitors than companies that blog once a week or less.
Small to medium businesses realize the biggest bump in traffic by blogging more often, compared with large businesses. If you currently put up one post a month — or skip blogging some months — you can triple your traffic rate by blogging 11+ times a month. If you currently blog once a week, you can double traffic by blogging 11+ times a month.
These results hold true for both B2B and B2C companies.
Blog Post Frequency and Lead Generation
Skeptics may be asking whether increase in traffic will correlate to lead generation. There is good news here as well.
The data shows that frequent blogging leads to more leads: Publishing 16 or more blog posts per month can boost lead generation by 4.5 times over blogging 0 to 4 times per month. Again, SMBs see more benefits with lead generation than large companies.
Most companies blog less than once per week, even though the data shows that frequent blogging correlates with increased traffic. If you make the investment in blogging, you stand to rise above your competitors and increase your marketing share exponentially.
Blog Post Best Practices
When you understand what best practices are for blogging, you can see whether your content meets the mark and adjust your blogging strategy accordingly.
At minimum, best practices recommend including one or more photo in every post. If you can include videos in your blog posts, you’ll enjoy even better results.
The more time you put into a blog post, the better your results. The average time spent creating a blog post is 3-1/3 hours. Most bloggers spend at least two hours creating a post. This may be due to a preference for longform content, with the average blog post topping 1,100 words.
Content Marketing Tips for SMBs
You may have heard that evergreen content performs best on blogs. Hubspot analyzed their own blog and saw that 90 percent of leads and 75 percent of traffic came from old posts. The numbers show that newsy content is not well suited for blogs, as it is less likely to hold interest over time.
Content that performs well on blogs address customers’ needs, whether it’s explaining how your services work or introducing customers to your brand and product offerings.
If you aren’t sure what to blog about, a content strategist can analyze your website, then match keywords and blog content to your target audience to deliver highly correlated, topical content.
If you’ve been trying to grow your audience through digital marketing but aren’t seeing the results you hope for, it may be time to double down on content marketing with the help of a top-tier content marketing agency. By targeting your blog posts to your target audience and increasing your blog post frequency, you will get results.
Lindsey D has 10+ years of experience with content marketing. She enjoys helping clients create blog posts, landing pages, case studies, and web copy that educates, informs, delights, and engages their target audience, whether that’s B2B or B2C.
