One thing that is constant is change. And that goes especially for pretty much everything we do as online marketers and bloggers.

The basics will always remain the basics. The fundamentals of business are the same. But, the tools and strategies surrounding online marketing are shifting beneath our feet.

Neil Patel had an interesting article. He gathered data from 183 different companies about how they handle their content marketing. He then compiled it all into 17 different charts. This then compiled down into some basic trends.

Let’s lay them out and see how this may be applied by all of us…

#1 – Expect Less Traffic From Social

On the average, there is less traffic coming from social media. Primarily because organic reach has dropped by a ton. Facebook has dwindled organic reach incredibly low so that now you pretty much have to pony up for sponsored posts to get any reach at all.

The lesson is… don’t rely on social media to build your traffic. And if you’re going to take social seriously, be ready to pay for it.

#2 – SEO (And Blogging) Really Matters.

A majority of blog traffic these days comes from search. And blogs, in general, are responsible for a majority of a site’s search traffic. This means that it is as important as ever to have a blog be a central part of your marketing strategy. Not only that, you need to take that extra effort to optimize your content for search. Which also means…

#3 – Content Frequency Does Matter

Now, I’m going to temper this one a bit. But, Neil says you need to write, on average, 5.7 articles per week. I call BS on that. Neil was surveying companies with content teams, and surely when you post high-quality content frequently, Google is going to love you. But, us normal people just can’t write 5.7 articles per week and it would be a disaster to even try.

But, frequency does matter. You want to be able to craft high-quality content that is in the neighborhood of 2,000-2,500 words. And do that as often as you can without sacrificing other important parts of business growth. If that means one post per week, fine.

I like The Redwood Strategy, personally. But, you have to do new stuff, too.

#4 – Blog readers are more likely to buy.

Neil’s survey showed that about 24% of customers to these businesses first found them via their blog. They also found that the conversion rate for a blog reader was 74% higher than a person who didn’t read the blog. So, simply put…

Blogging makes money. It earns customers. So, blogging more frequently will boost your conversion rates.

The average customer will have visited your blog 3.15 times before they purchase, so that’s another reason to try to blog more often. For them to become return readers, you have to have new stuff for them to read. You’re also going to need that email list to help bring them back.

#5 – Build that Email List.

This shouldn’t be news to any of you, but that email list is important. And even with all the whiz-bang ways of getting a conversion and making the sale, email marketing continues to win out as the top way to get blog readers to turn into customers.

But, a surprising second place…

#6 – Use Remarketing

The use of remarketing (or retargeting) comes in a pretty close second place to email marketing as the channel that finally drove the sale. It sort of makes sense, in a way…

The person comes to your blog (likely from search). They are then captured in the remarketing audience. After they’ve left, they are met with ads on Google, Facebook, maybe Youtube. Those ads all bring the person back and ultimately make the sale.

So, you do want to use remarketing as a standard portion of your ongoing marketing. It is paid advertising, but the good news is that it is far, FAR cheaper than trying to reach brand new people using advertising (at least most of the time).

#7 – There’s growth outside the United States

Most of us (including me) tend to do everything in English. It is our natural language. But, more and more, there is growing opportunity in expanding your blog into other languages.

In the survey Neil did, translations into additional languages was the top strategy for increasing traffic. Updating older content and blogging more were pretty big, too, but it is interesting to see just how well translations worked.

So, might it make sense to look into translating your blog into other languages? In some cases, perhaps the answer is yes.

#8 – Publish Off Your Blog, Too

Your blog will always be the most important content asset to publish to.. and your home base. But, that doesn’t mean we want to get tunnel vision on it.

Re-publishing content to Medium can help drive traffic. Publishing real content (and not just links) to Facebook and LinkedIn can be effective. Publishing to Youtube can obviously be effective, too.

Point is… think in terms of distribution and not just publishing on your blog.

…

Thoughts or questions? Hit reply and send it over.