Is blogging dead? Is blogging relevant? Understandably, you’re pondering these questions as a growth marketer.
A history moment: The first blog was created 30 years ago.
The way people consume content has obviously evolved since then—you need to focus on investing in the content and channels that will win your audience’s attention today and into the future. Additionally, because the digital world is completely saturated with blog content, you’re not sure if blogging is still worth doing if you can’t cut through the noise.
A eureka moment: The blog strategies of the past are not enough to lead you to success in 2024.
It’s time to turn things around by modernizing your blog strategy so you can deliver better content more efficiently, and start achieving some wins.
1. Incorporate Video Into Your Blogs
With any growth marketing initiative, you want “more”—more traffic, more conversions, more revenue. Video marketing is a proven tactic for increasing these success factors on blogs.
First, let’s dig into how video can affect your traffic.
Video is a smart addition to your SEO content strategy because it positively impacts your organic traffic by:
- Increasing time on page
- Lowering your bounce rate
- Improving click-through rates on search results pages
- Winning you more featured snippets
- Boosting quality backlinks to your website
But video marketing does so much more than get you traffic. It also delivers better results once someone is on your site.
In the latest annual blogging survey by Orbit Media, bloggers who add visuals to their blog content reported stronger results.
When we drill down into what kind of visuals specifically lead to better performance, it’s the content that is more challenging to produce—34% of successful bloggers indicated that video was an especially potent visual to include in blogs.
There is a recurring theme of “greater effort leads to greater rewards” that Andy Crestodina mentions alongside the blogging survey data. If you’re blogging the way you always have, not experimenting with ways to elevate your blog content, then your blog will never get the results you want.
When organizations are strategic about producing videos that make it worth the extra marketing investment, they end up doubling down on their video blog strategy to reap the rewards. This is why videos in blog posts have more than doubled since 2015, jumping from 12% to 26% of blogs that now incorporate video.
Although the number of marketers leveraging video is slowly growing, it’s not yet the norm—especially in blogs—so this space is wide open.
Video unlocks a major opportunity for your organization to differentiate itself from the competition and the crowded digital realm of written-only blog content.
2. Revamp Your Old Content
Stop. Don’t skip this one because it’s not as new and exciting as #1 and #3.
Revamping old content is super effective and incredibly overlooked by growth marketers. Orbit Media’s blogging survey revealed that bloggers who update old content are twice as likely to report success.
If you’ve invested a year or more into your blog, you should have some star performers delivering a decent amount of organic traffic to your website. If you’re not refreshing that content and are instead pouring all of your energy into creating brand-new content every single time, you’re passing up a golden opportunity to see more gains from your blog strategy.
With your blog, get out of the mentality of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Instead, think “If it’s working, make it work even better.”
How to get started when revamping your old content:
- Dig into your Google Analytics or SEO tools to identify high-performing organic blog posts that you could get more mileage out of.
- Also, identify underperforming content that isn’t doing so hot to give it a second chance with some improvements.
- Decide if any of these pieces are worth tackling, then decide if they need to be tweaked or entirely reworked.
- After all of the updates are made, this is “like-new content” so you will re-release it with a new publication date.
While you’re working over an old piece, be sure to update internal links and CTAs to steer traffic from these posts to other relevant content that needs the spotlight.
You’ll send some of this positive traffic momentum to newly released content for a boost. Another bonus is that you’ll keep your audience around longer on your website to increase time on page and improve engagement metrics.
Tackling existing content is great low-hanging fruit when you’re looking for ways to be efficient and impactful with your blog efforts. Much of the groundwork is done for you, so it’s much simpler to add or swap out sections, spruce up the content with an informative video, or include new research to really drive your main points home.
Ooooh, one more thing…when you improve a blog that’s already driving organic traffic, it sends a positive signal to the search algorithms. Blog improvements show the algorithms that you care about providing relevant, accurate content to your intended audience.
You should get a gentle pat on the head from the algorithm overlords and see an SEO lift.
3. Take Advantage of AI
It’s impossible to talk about modernizing your blog strategy without acknowledging AI.
About 65% of bloggers are now using AI in their processes in some capacity. The most common blogging use cases for AI are:
- Idea generation (43%)
- Writing headlines (29%)
- Creating outlines (28%)
- Suggesting edits (22%)
- Writing first drafts (21%)
A lot of growth marketers have been way too starry-eyed about AI. So, I’ll share something we tell our clients that helps people understand its possibilities and limitations. AI is useful for assembling content.
The data above reflects this overarching use case in the blog content creation process. Only 3% of professional bloggers use AI to write full blog articles, while the majority are using it purely for content assembly.
Many growth marketers have been experimenting with AI tools over the past year to find a place for it in existing processes. Along the way, some experiments have worked and many, many others have not.
Blogging success correlates with longer, more informative blog content published at least weekly or more.
- 46% of bloggers who report “strong results” publish pieces 2,000+ words or longer, compared to just 14% publishing 500-word posts.
- 44% of the most successful bloggers post more than once a week, while only 15% publish monthly.
Here’s the issue you’ve probably seen with AI, just like we have…
AI has been a “bad influence” on those starry-eyed marketers seduced by the idea that “more content faster” equals “more business growth faster.” They’re pumping out lots of low-quality blogs by using these AI tools incorrectly and irresponsibly as end-to-end content production solutions.
Plenty of marketers (ourselves included) leverage ChatGPT to increase content quality. AI can and should be wielded responsibly to support your growth marketing mission. With skillful prompts and proper training, AI is capable of helping you produce content more efficiently and with better precision.
Growth marketers who produce high-quality blog content at a higher publishing frequency are positioned to achieve better results. As long as you treat AI as your content assembler, then yes, it can modernize and scale your blog strategy by lending a helpful hand in its execution.
Blogs Aren’t Dead, They’re Just Evolving
If you feel like blogging is dead or irrelevant, I’ll bet you’re simply not seeing the results you were hoping for. I’d make the case to put some extra energy into resuscitating your blog rather than abandoning it.
Often it’s not the fault of blogging as a growth marketing strategy, but rather the execution. You know, all the things we just discussed…
- Cranking out written content without adding visually dynamic elements, like video.
- Leaving opportunities on the table with old content that could do more with a few updates.
- Sticking with an old-school content creation process instead of advancing with tools, like AI.
Times are changing, so the way you approach your blog must also change. Make an intentional shift in your blog strategy. Adopt more innovative techniques and cutting-edge technologies that are becoming table stakes, and great results will follow.
