Is content really all that important to the success of your online marketing strategy? The argument may continue to rage among small business owners but one thing does seem clear. Not enough business owners are giving their content the attention is needs. Content is, indeed, critical to the future survival of your business and is truly, not a matter of belief but a matter of fact. Some recent research gathered and published by Backlinko seems to support the notion that content is, indeed, king. The following comes from that recently published report:
- Websites that have a blog attract 55% more traffic (Quick Sprout)
- Marketers who put an emphasis on blogging are 13x more likely to see a positive ROI from their efforts (HubSpot)
- A little over 15% of marketers use blogs as the primary output within their content strategy, second to video (18%) (HubSpot)
- Websites with active blogs generate 97% more backlinks (Business 2 Community)
- Blog posts containing a relevant image receive an average of 94% more views than posts without an image (MDG)
- 90% of bloggers include at least one image in their posts. Within this group, those using more images were more likely to report strong results (Orbit Media)
- 87% of marketers say video marketing has helped them increase website traffic (Wyzowl)
- Marketers report that their website (85%), social media (84%), and YouTube (67%) are the top 3 channels to distribute video content (Vidyard)
- The rate at which videos are shared on social is 12x higher than image and text content combined (Small Business Trends)
- Social video posts see a 48% boost in views (HubSpot)
- Using video helps marketers grow business revenue 49% faster than marketers not using video (Vidyard)
- 86% of consumers say they would like more video content from the brands they support (Wyzowl)
- 68% of consumers said that a short video was their favorite medium to learn about a product or service (Wyzowl)
- The top goal companies want to achieve from their social media strategy is building brand awareness (HooteSuite)
- 61% of marketers focus their social media content around teaching, 58% focus on storytelling, and 53% create posts that inspire (Sprout Social)
- Blog posts are statistically the most effective tool for building brand awareness, with 31% of B2B companies listing short articles as the highest-performing content in this respect (Content Marketing Institute)
- 75% of B2B marketers are likelier to use blogging as part of their social media content, as compared to 61% of B2C marketers (Social Media Examiner)
- B2B companies who blog consistently receive 67% more monthly leads than companies who don’t blog regularly (Demand Metric)
- CMI reports that 85% of B2B companies send out an email marketing newsletter as part of their content marketing plan (Content Marketing Institute)
- Email engagement is the most-used metric for assessing content performance within B2B businesses, with 90% of companies tracking things like open and click-throughs (Content Marketing Institute)
- The top 3 tactics that B2C marketers use as part of their content marketing strategy: social media content (94%), blogging (80%), and email newsletters (74%) (Content Marketing Institute)
- Content marketing is 3x more cost effective at lead generation than paid search (Content Marketing Institute)
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
