Four New Charts That Show the Value of Small Business Blogging

Filed in Blogging, Statistics by Matt McGee on October 31, 2012

Here’s more/new evidence that speaks to the value of small business blogging — specifically, they speak to the impact that blogging can have on traffic and leads.

The charts and data come from HubSpot’s new Marketing Benchmarks report — an aggregation of results from their 7,000+ small business customers that use HubSpot’s marketing platform.

Blogging & Traffic

These first two charts show the impact of regular blogging on overall website traffic. The first chart looks at the relationship between how many new blog articles are published each month and traffic, and the second chart look at the relationship between total blog articles published and traffic.

traffic-from-blogging-monthly

traffic-from-blogging-total

HubSpot’s data suggests that companies that blog between 10-15 times per month get five times more traffic than companies that don’t blog. When I consult with a small business owner, I always recommend publishing at least twice per week — a total of 8-10 articles per month.

The second chart there speaks to the value of long-term blogging. The longer you stick with it and continue to publish valuable content, the bigger the rewards will be over time. I don’t know where/when this happens, but at some point your blog archives will likely become the most valuable source of traffic you have as a small business blogger.

Blogging & Lead Generation

The charts that show the impact of blogging on lead generation look awfully similar. First is the chart showing monthly blog article counts and lead gen, and the second chart shows total blog posts and lead generation.

leads-from-blogging-monthly

leads-from-blogging-total

HubSpot says that its customers that increase their blogging from 3-5 times per month to 6-8 times per month nearly double their online leads. And then when its customers manage to blog 15 times per month (or more), lead gen skyrockets.

Likewise, companies that keep their blog alive past the 100 article level also see a substantial rise in leads generated online.

Final Thoughts

Of course, it’s not just about quantity — quality is also important here. But the HubSpot charts and statistics echo what I’ve seen with my own clients in the past. It takes a little time to gain traction and see results, but when a small business consistently publishes quality content each month, and keeps doing so for several months to a year (and more), website traffic goes up along with other goals — whether it be lead gen or product sales or whatever.

You can get the HubSpot report for free, but you do need to provide contact information.

Comments (10)

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  1. Kristinn says:

    I forwarded this to a couple of new clients that were getting a bit anxious about their SEO campaign. For some reason, around the 5 month mark there usually seems to be some fretting. It help me say, “hang in there and be patient”. Thanks. Kris

  2. Clay says:

    To what Kristinn said, I’ve also had a few clients get annoyed/worried as close as the second month. It’s always a process, and I do understand where these small business companies come from when they don’t see instant results. Great article!

    • Matt McGee says:

      Yeah, I’ve had that same experience. Have to drive home the fact that (like just about everything SEO-related) it takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, etc., etc.

  3. Reading this makes me anxious….knowing that I have not been a diligent as I should have been with blogging. After several months off, seeing this brings feelings similar to not having called a good client in a long time. These Hubspot graphs paint a pretty dramatic picture.

  4. Matt:

    Glad to hear I’m not the only one advocating the importance of a blog. I honestly don’t know how a business can survive online without a blog. It’s the basis/foundation for everything you do online in my opinion. And like you, I also recommend a minimum of 2 blog posts per week. I have yet to work with a business owner that isn’t willing to do it. Granted, I hire a ghost writer to write for their blog but they appreciate the importance of a blog and are all over it.

    Travis Van Slooten

  5. Steve says:

    Interesting figures, company I work for has been really slack on blogging forever and we recently started doing daily content. Immediate increase in traffic around the blog, but most of it spam and we were wondering if that’s all it would attract, these figures offer some hope!

  6. Hey Matt, Thanks for calling my attention to this and summarizing it so I can summarize it for my clients! I need to work on shortening my own posts and encouraging clients to do the same so that the effort isn’t as overwhelming. Do you an an opinion on Outbrain? Have you used it yet?
    Thanks,
    Suzanne

  7. P.S. Also, yes I too have seen that it takes a few months to help rankings and get traction. I also got a boost when I started using Google Plus consistently!

    • Matt McGee says:

      Thanks for the comments, folks. Suzanne — I’ve not used Outbrain, but I have seen it in action on other sites. My general impression is that it often shows a lot of eally low-quality and spammy content as “related/recommended” and that’s not the kind of experience I’d want to give my readers. That said, I think Outbrain ownership/management just announced plans to remove spammy/low-quality publishers from its system even if it means a loss of revenue. So maybe things will improve if/when they follow through on that.

  8. Roger Tang says:

    We did struggle for long with the following – whether blogging is for SEO or for human. Quality blogging requires resources but definitely small companies like us can’t afford a high frequency. Kinda spinners or copy+paste yield high volume but they put us on the risk of being penalized from search engines….our conclusion is option 1 after all and seems we made the right choice – we gain good reputations (search & human community) though the frequency is relatively low.