Is Blogging Really Worth It for Small Businesses in 2022?

At Embryo, we often get approached by small businesses about the value of blogging. More specifically, in 2022, with a staggering 7.5 million blog posts being published every day, we get asked if it’s really worth it.

Well, the short answer is YES.

In the most general sense, blogging is a prime resource that businesses can use to optimise the SEO – hence, online visibility – of their websites. For a small business, in particular, where budgets may be more restricted than larger corporations, blogging is even more critical. In fact, it has been ranked as the most effective form of content marketing (beating email marketing, whitepapers, and eBooks) due to being relatively easy, inexpensive, and effective (when done right).

It won’t come as a shock then, that, if business growth is important to you, blogging is king. Our practical advice is to find a feasible way to fit a blog schedule into your overall marketing strategy. However, if your marketing efforts are already stretched thin, and time is in short supply, you can always get in touch with the award-winning team at Embryo and we will be happy to help.

Why should my small business blog?

In the Internet Age, the enduring prevalence of blogging will come as no surprise. Not only will a well-written blog post boost your overall SEO, site traffic, and digital presence, but it can also help potential customers gain more insight into your industry, brand, product, or service.

4 core benefits of blogging in 2022

• Blogging gives you the opportunity to diversify your site’s content so that you can reach more people.
• This increased reach has a long-term benefit that will drive traffic to your website, enhancing your chances of leads. In fact, not just an indirect benefit on sales, research shows that 56% of consumers have made a direct purchase of a product or service off the back of a blog.
• Blogging helps you build backlinks, leading to better rankings in search engines.
• Blogs can be reused as material across different platforms, e.g. as content for your organic or paid social media marketing.

So, now that the benefits of blogging have been outlined, let’s check out some statistics that further exemplify why blogging for small businesses is a must.

Blogging statistics 2022

Scale & readership

• 77% of internet users actively read blogs (e.g. once a month).
• Over 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages each month.
• More than 7.5 billion blogs are written every day.
• Readers spend an average of 16 seconds on a blog post. This includes bounce rates.
• 55% of readers skim blog posts, averaging 15 seconds or less.
• 71% of blog posts are written in English.

Lead generation & ROI

• B2B companies with blogs get 67% more leads than those without.
• Businesses that maintain regular blogs are 13 times more likely to achieve good ROI.
• 56% of consumers have made a direct purchase of a product or service off the back of a blog.
• 54% of Fortune 500 companies are angling their blogs towards thought leadership, product promotion and engagement.
• It costs 62% less to blog than to engage in traditional online marketing techniques.

Website & search engine optimisation

• Businesses that maintain an active blog enjoy 97% more inbound links than their competitors.
• 54% of Fortune 500 companies run a public-facing blog, almost doubling since 2012 where the figure was only 28%.
• Businesses that regularly blog tend to receive twice as much traffic than their less active counterparts.
• Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages than websites without blogs.

Blog structure

• The average word count for a blog post is 1236 words long (56% longer than in 2014).
• Longer reads (3,000 words or more) receive 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than average-length articles.
• 60% of marketers regularly reuse blog content 2 to 5 times as other online resources.
• 90% of all blog posts include images, whereas videos appear in only 25% of blog posts.
• 53% of visitors would leave a blog if the images on the page wouldn’t load.

Have a chat with Embryo for business blog expertise

Looking to learn more about how blogging can impact your website and overall business success? Check out some of our latest blogs here or get in touch with the team where we’ll be happy to discuss all things digital marketing.