Are blogs delivering results?

Chart of the day: New research reveals that bloggers are getting results across a few metrics, whilst most are blogging less often than daily

Over 1000 bloggers took part in a survey for Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media, they were asked a range of questions about how often they blog, the types of media they use, blog promotion and whether blogs are delivering results for them.

As in the B2B world (and even in B2C) blogging is such a commonly used technique, which often gets a lot of time from marketers, but does it work? The results are positive.

Bloggers are blogging less often, most bloggers publish weekly rather than daily, but bloggers are spending more time than ever writing blog posts. The message "quality over quality" certainly seems to be true. Bloggers are not publishing loads of content for the sake of it, there is a clear focus on quality. Better, longer posts but published less often.

Most bloggers are not publishing daily.

The average time a blog post takes to write could be to focus on quality. Blog posts are also longer.

Bloggers believe that their blogs are delivering results.

More than ever bloggers are using paid promotion and doing influencer outreach, and overall bloggers believe their blog has a positive effect on their business. 29.4% believe their blog has a positive effect on marketing results and 53.9% believe their blog delivers "some" positive results. 9.4% don't know if their blog delivers positive results and 7.4% believe the results are disappointing.

Bloggers are switching to quality over quantity to become Google's friend and to encourage sharing across social media, they are also increasingly used influencer outreach and paid promotion. There is an increasing length of time spent on blogging, but the results are paying off. Bloggers are fully aware that just blogging alone isn't enough, and that further promotion including paid promotion is needed. The future seems bright for blogging and I suspect that in future, many blog posts will be updated and republished, with less new content being produced.

• Source: Orbit Media 
• Sample: 1377 bloggers
• Recommended resource: Successful SEO guide