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Business Bloggers Lead the Pack As Personal Blogs Decline

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By Laurie Fullerton, Freelance Writer

December 1, 2015 | 3 min read

Although blogging remains a highly effective tool in business marketing, it may be a far more influential tool going forward as personal blogging is on the way out and blogging for business is more prominent and more sophisticated.

After surveying over 1,000 bloggers, a report published by Orbit Media Studios, notes that bloggers are now more client focused and spending up to six hours on one post, and writing longer form content (up to 1,500 words) and more editors are involved in the process. With the current emphasis on native content and content enrichment, those surveyed said they were publishing much more often and using at least one editor.

Over 57 per cent of bloggers surveyed write for clients or are service providers who write on behalf of clients at least some of the time. Additionally, 64 per cent write more than one blog while guest blogging is increasingly popular.

Social media is generating the most blog views and this remains the primary site for bloggers to post. Social media is still by far the most common method for getting the word out and 93 per cent of the bloggers surveyed said they share their posts on social media first.

“Competition is fierce and readers are fickle. There is no such thing as a ‘successful blog’ now. There are only ‘successful blog posts.’ We are no longer in the albums era, where people will read everything you post, fed to them through RSS and email,” said Jay Bauer of Convince and Convert. “Instead, we are in the singles era, where the key is to create the definitive post on a particular topic, enabling it to break out from your historical traffic and sharing norms.”

The survey notes that a very small percentage of posts are responsible for an overwhelming portion of total traffic. The consequence is that each post needs to be bigger, better, more comprehensive to give it a chance to become a “hit.”

Key findings indicate that 53 per cent of bloggers are publishing at least weekly, with a significant number of bloggers doing more work. The question of when bloggers blog is changing, too, as blogs become more the domain of business bloggers. It is no longer a hobby but blogs are now often written during business hours rather than at night or on weekends.

The companies that act as intermediaries between bloggers and their audiences are getting smarter, too, the survey indicates and the continued strength of email marketing is relevant as it is considered a viable channel that connects bloggers directly to readers. There is a clear shift that benefits business marketers, as blogging becomes more data driven, with best practices emerging in the business sector. The survey concludes blogging is becoming less of a hobby and more of a respected profession with more structure and accountability.

“I think bloggers that are truly focused on business growth could benefit from using editors. However, I will admit that when I first started I did not use editors for my posts,” said Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner. “But now that I look back, I really should have used an editor. Especially since my first blog was about writing.”

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