DATA: How Often Should You Blog for Your Business?

A company blog is an excellent way to generate valuable content to attract visitors to your website. But how often should we publish articles, is it the same for both B2B and B2C companies of all sizes, and what’s the true impact on traffic and leads? Data from more than 7,000 businesses reveals all.

Blogging has many benefits to both B2B and B2C companies. First and foremost, as online marketers we blog to create new, valuable content to attract people to our websites. 

Secondly, blog content provides us with material that we can share on social media, which our followers can then pass on to their own networks. 

Finally, fresh content, regularly produced and properly keyword optimised has a positive effect on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). In general, the more indexed (registered by Google, Bing etc.) pages your site has, the better.

However, effective blogging requires planning, scheduling and oversight, not to mention the actual writing if you want to do it in-house. Even outsourced, there is still commissioning, editing, approval and upload (publishing).

All companies that consider blogging ask the same important questions: how often should we do it, what’s the impact on traffic, how many more leads will we get? Fortunately, HubSpot has made available data from 7,000 of its customers, and as a Swiss Inbound Marketing partner we’re able to present you with the results. 

A quick note before we discuss the data

As with all surveys, the information presented is an average. For one company, blogging daily might work wonders, while for another two-three times per week may suffice. The effect may also differ – so much is dependent on how and where you share your content and how well optimised it is for search engines.

The following information should serve as a general indication, based on a large sample of companies engaged in Inbound Marketing activities, including blogging but also social media, SEO, email marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM or PPC) and landing page creation. 

At the end of this article, we’ll make our own recommendations based on what we know of our readership here in Switzerland and across Europe.

1. How often should we blog to increase website traffic?

The following chart is taken from our latest ebook – Marketing Benchmarks from 7000+ Businesses – created in partnership with HubSpot. According to this, the more your company posts per month, the better.

The chart clearly shows that a company that blogs more than 15 per month receives five times more traffic than one that doesn’t blog at all, on average. That works out as at least four per week – a tall order indeed, especially if your company is just starting out.

We recommend starting small at one or two per week and then ramping it up as your fledgling content schedule finds its feet. This should give you around twice as many website visitors per month, according to our chart.

2. How often should we blog to increase my leads?

In this chart, we differentiate between the effect of blogging on leads for B2B and B2C companies, both of which see huge increases in leads when going from one to two articles per month, to more than 15. 

The data shows that two to three times per week is a solid starting point, still offering large rewards in lead generation over two and fewer per week. 

Why the differences between B2B and B2C, especially at 15+ times per month? Blog articles are no less appealing to industry readers as they are to consumers, it’s simply a matter of generating the right content for your chosen audience. One of the more obvious reasons for this marked difference is social media. Blogging goes very well with sharing e.g. liking on Facebook and retweeting on Twitter, two networks with huge consumer audiences. Professional networks LinkedIn and Xing – frequently used to share B2B blog content – have far smaller audiences, thus skewing the data in favour of B2C.

3. How will all of our blog posts together affect traffic? 

Again, a slightly different chart this time. This one shows the impact on traffic according to business size (number of employees). Also, here we discuss total published blog articles, rather than a per month frequency. 

Blogging has noticeable benefits for companies of all sizes – each group at least doubling its traffic when reaching the 200 blog post milestone. However, its good news for small companies, which see more than eight times the amount of traffic with 200+ published articles, on average.

What it means to companies in Switzerland and Europe

Blogging with the intent of generating traffic and leads requires discipline and a keen understanding of who your audience is and how to reach out to them. Starting of small is a good way to establish a solid blogging foundation. Even if you outsource the writing, there is still a certain amount of direction, approval and oversight on the part of your company.

Use of social media by Swiss companies is lagging somewhat behind the rest of Europe and the US. However, as Versio2 partner Julien Renaud asserts in  EDITORIAL: Swiss & European Marketing Trends, “in Switzerland, especially in B2B, great opportunities await on professional networks such as LinkedIn and XING.” Such opportunities include establishing yourself as an industry thought-leader by regularly participating in group discussions and sharing links to not only your own articles, but others’ as well.

Download Marketing Benchmarks from 7000+ Businesses to find out how web pages, blogging, landing pages and social media affect traffic and lead generation – information which will help you make your own decisions about your company’s promotional activities, and how best to invest your marketing spend.