You can buy mass-produced pens in stores for less than $1 each, yet people are still willing to spend $50+ for handcrafted pens. Even though technology offers ways to mass produce products, services, and content, audiences are still drawn to the magic of human craftsmanship.
Even with the appeal of human-created products and services, content consumption will be led by AI, just not in the way most people expect. AI isn’t in competition with human writers but will instead help readers discover and consume content more efficiently, making the role of human writers even more crucial to the content-creation process.
Here’s a look at one potential future of content consumption that combines human writers with AI content creation.
What Does AI Not Do
Before diving into the potential of AI, let’s step back a second and look over where AI falls short.
AI Is Limited by Current Content
AI does not create content out of thin air. It requires a starting point, prompt, and data to produce results.
From the prompt, the AI content creator can scour its database to pull responses and generate content from that prompt. However, the content it creates is still limited by what information is available to the AI tool. As a result, AI struggles to produce original ideas.
Human writers can pull new ideas and topics without being prompted. Human creativity and experience is enough inspiration to craft thought leadership.
AI Does Not Have the Full Story
AI follows patterns to deduce the next step. Think of it like the game of Clue. Throughout the game, you try to guess the primary suspect in the mystery. However, you only have part of the story. As people show you their cards, you get closer to narrowing down the suspect.
AI works the same way. When you ask it a question, it can only provide an answer based on the cards in its hand. Sometimes, those cards are from unreliable, outdated, or biased sources, resulting in a biased or inaccurate AI tool.
Human writers know when they only look at some of the cards and can take steps to discover the rest of the information before making claims. For instance, most journalists know that a front cover story of a gossip magazine does not equate to hard facts. Yet, most AI wouldn’t know the difference between an exaggerated human-interest story and a researched fact.
AI Does Not Use Critical Thinking
One of the most challenging parts of AI is its inability to use critical thinking. It cannot correct itself other than looking for variances in patterns. However, it misses small nuances in writing that might not match a usual or natural pattern.
It also struggles with empathy. Humans can identify powerful opportunities to publish timely content or identify times to hold back on making statements that might be in bad taste.
These are just three of the top reasons you cannot replace human writers with AI content creation.
The Relationship between AI and Humans
AI was never meant to shine in the creative arts. While many people demonstrate AI’s ability to write, create art, and compose music, this is not where AI was meant to be most effective.
Placing AI in the role of people is like using a snow shovel to dig in your garden. Yes, a snow shovel may look like a garden shovel. It even digs like a garden shovel. Despite the similarities, a snow shovel was not built to dig dirt, and a garden shovel is highly ineffective at shoveling snow.
Just because AI content generators can create content like people doesn’t mean that’s what you should use. Not when you have highly effective human writers that can infuse so much heart into content.
You should also not throw out AI based on its ability to write any more than you should call a snow shovel useless because it can’t dig an effective hole in the garden. Instead, before incorporating or rejecting AI, you need to dive into what it was built for and its potential to transform how humans interact with content.
How to Use AI for Content Creation without Removing Human Writers
Let’s look at the future of content creation and how AI will play a valuable role in doing what it does best: analyzing and summarizing vast amounts of data.
1. AI Connects Audiences to Relevant Content
Google has used AI for years, helping readers find the most relevant content.
Its algorithm can identify subtle differences in searches and user behaviors to identify what each user would find most relevant. That’s how Google search pulls different search results for someone in Canada and someone in Florida looking for coffee shops near them.
Google can also use its algorithm to understand what someone wants when they search for a driver. For instance, it can distinguish whether they mean someone who operates a vehicle, computer software, or golf equipment, based on past searches, user behavior, and context clues.
Thanks to AI, marketers have search engine optimization and can create content that their audience might find. To take advantage of AI, writers should create optimized content that uses keywords, context clues, and relevant links to associated topics to help Google’s AI-powered algorithm match your content with an appropriate audience.
2. AI Summarizes Longform Content
Have you ever sat in a meeting that took over an hour and left thinking, “That could have been a one-paragraph email?”
That’s how some people feel when they’re looking for information online. Think about the last time you searched for a recipe online. Before seeing a list of ingredients, you had to read through paragraphs of the author’s backstory.
You don’t have time for that.
Many recipe authors understand that not everyone wants the backstory of their family’s famous green bean casserole. That’s why you can often find a button that allows you to jump straight to the recipe.
While that button is not AI-run, Google offers a much more complex “jump to recipe” button. It provides a means for users to jump right to the content they need most.
They call this Google AI Overviews. In searches, this small section appears at the top of the search results page. It is a section AI generated from the top results to help users instantly see their answers rather than sifting through dozens of results.
Image from Google Search
This new search experience provides a glimpse at the future of AI content consumption, especially for long-form content.
For example, Hushly offers an AI content chat that allows users to interact with content without reading the entire post. You might be familiar with the TL;DR tag for “Too long, didn’t read.” This is a section of posts that summarizes what the post was about for those who didn’t have time to read it all. Other content creators also add key takeaways at the top of their posts.
With AI content chat, users can search their questions similarly to how they search in Google. AI then provides a summarized response pulled from your content, similar to Google’s AI Overviews, allowing readers to conveniently find answers and not leave just because they don’t have time to read your full post.
When you finish a long webinar, you usually have a Q&A session, allowing your audience to ask follow-up questions. It ensures your audience walks away fully understanding the topic and receiving the insights they need most.
You could have a FAQ section at the end of your content to quickly cover critical points and additional points you didn’t have a chance to cover earlier. Yet, that is not always comprehensive enough.
AI content chats are like a cross between an FAQ page and the Q&A session at the end of a webinar. It can use a user’s behavior on your website and content from other posts to generate answers to any additional questions readers have after finishing your content.
You start the conversation with human-written content, then AI finishes it with data pulled from that human-written content. It’s a tag-team approach to content creation.
The benefit of incorporating AI chat in your content to answer further questions is that readers can find all the information they need on your site and (fingers crossed!) won’t return to Google search to keep looking elsewhere.
4. AI Provides Further Reading Recommendations
The average customer has about eight touchpoints before they agree to a meeting. Depending on the industry, this number can be considerably higher. On average, 71% of B2B buyers read blog posts before purchasing.
Because most website visitors won’t buy your products after reading just one article, you will want visitors to engage with multiple posts that will lead them through the buyer’s journey, resolving their pain points and offering a solution they need.
AI-run resource pages can pull data based on a user’s actions. Remember that AI content chat? An AI resource page will save those questions and provide recommended content based on those questions and browsing behavior to keep users on your page, consuming that human-written content and finding relevant and convenient answers.
5. AI Improves Human Quality
Earlier, we talked about AI’s shortcomings. Now let’s touch on human writer’s shortcomings. The most common shortcoming is a human’s potential to make mistakes. Imperfections are what makes humans so very human, but it’s also what helps make people more relatable to one another.
After all, who do you relate to most on social media? The person with the picture-perfect home or that adult who still has yesterday’s dishes? While a human’s natural and sometimes imperfect way of writing may be more relatable at times, you don’t want to make distracting grammatical errors that take away from your content’s authority and reliability.
These mistakes might be minor grammatical errors or awkward sentences. It might also be writer’s block that keeps a human author from creating fresh content.
AI can fill in those gaps. Humans still lead content creation, but AI picks up on areas where the human writer falls short.
For instance, using tools like Grammarly to correct grammar can improve a writer’s writing quality by catching those pesky missing commas or wordy sentences. ChatGPT can sometimes step in if a writer needs to brainstorm ideas, headers, or outlines for their content. Together, AI and human writers can become a powerhouse of content creation.
Take Your Content into the Future with AI Content Creation
Yes, we just promoted AI for content creation. We aren’t discussing replacing creative roles with a very un-creative robot. We are discussing using AI to help your audience discover and interact with your content more conveniently in a customer-centric approach to content creation.
You still need a quality writer creating content AI can pull from. Yet, you can use AI tools for filling in gaps and improving content consumption. AI can be a powerful tool to help meet your audience’s needs in one place: your website.
Ready for the future of content creation and consumption?
The first stop is a top-quality content shop where human writers create optimized content for the modern website.
Most B2B marketers use generative AI, even many of our clients. That’s right – our clients use generative AI and still hire a content writing agency.
Generative AI has more uses than generating entire blog posts. Most B2B marketers don’t even use generative AI for writing final drafts of blog posts.
Learn six ways B2B marketers can benefit from generative AI for marketing to their high-value clients.
Pros and Cons of B2B Generative AI for Marketing
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT use prompts to generate responses. Using these tools is like having a conversation with a robot. You must use precise language. The tool will create responses based on the content it studied. Most tools study online content, such as leading websites and blog posts.
Because it studies what has been written, its answers tend to have a pattern and reflect what is popular.
The pros to using generative AI are it can scour much more data than a human writer could.
The downside of generative AI is that it can only pull ideas that others have already had. And since it relies on content already out there, it can often be biased if the leading content is biased. In addition, it can also be inaccurate if it pulls information from a site that doesn’t use accurate data.
Because of the cons, brands must be careful when using generative AI. B2B brands need to take extra precautions since they often work with clients with a much higher standard of accuracy than B2C brands deal with.
Just because generative AI has several shortcomings doesn’t mean you must toss it out altogether. On average, 71% of B2B brands use AI B2B marketing to manage the sales process, including nurturing their clients through content.
We will explore six ways that generative AI can help B2B marketers who want to keep their content on a higher level to relate to their business clients.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, over half of B2B marketers use AI to brainstorm new topics. This is the top use case for B2B marketers.
Often, coming up with ideas is the hardest part of content creation. Once you have an idea, you can research what others wrote for inspiration and perform keyword research to find a unique angle. However, you can’t move forward until you first have a quality, traffic-driving idea.
Generative AI can be a valuable source of new topics. It can search thousands of ideas floating around online based on what your audience is looking for. It can then collect those ideas into a convenient summary for you to review.
While AI can brainstorm ideas, you will not want to remove your content strategist from the mix. Generative AI is like your Instacart shopper who brings all the ingredients to your house. You still need someone to unload and organize those bags on the shelf.
In the same way, AI brings the topics to your strategist, but the strategist must run those ideas through research tools to find which ones relate to the audience and bring in the most valuable traffic. Generative AI just improves the efficiency of the process by giving the strategist a starting point.
2. Researching Content Components
Since we are talking about SEO keywords, let’s dive deeper into that topic. Did you know generative AI can also help with finding keywords?
It doesn’t replace keyword research tools but can summarize topic ideas into root keywords. You can then search these keywords to find more specific keywords with a higher traffic potential and less competition.
In addition to aiding in keyword research, you can use it to help generate headline ideas. When you input your keyword into a tool like ChatGPT, it will generate several headlines around that keyword. We don’t recommend using those headlines exactly as AI provides them. Most of those headlines are generic and use similar syntaxes.
Instead, you can use those headlines as inspiration. Flip a few words around or switch them out for synonyms to create a strong, optimized headline that stands out from others on a search results page.
3. Writing Drafts
About 45% of B2B marketers use generative AI to write drafts, according to the Competitive Marketing Intelligence (CMI) report.
AI is most effective for the first draft, not the final drafts. About 27% of marketers don’t trust what AI writes. Even if they don’t trust the output as a final draft, that doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful for the brainstorming draft.
This is the draft where you spew words out as fast as you can think just to add words to a page and provide a framework for writing.
This stage is rough and should never see the light of day. However, you must put your ideas on paper before you can organize them into a coherent whole that your business readers will want to read.
AI can help with the spewing of words onto paper. When you type a topic into generative AI, it provides an outline and may even write some great starting points.
If you want to write industry-leading content, you shouldn’t stop there. Those points will reflect what others in your industry already covered. You want to add originality. More importantly, you want to add industry expertise and personal experience (review Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines to see why personal experience is crucial to Google ranking).
Because you want that added depth and originality to your content, you will take your AI-generated rough draft and rewrite it into a 100% fresh draft. The final draft will only have a shadow of the original AI in the form of the outline or a few ideas it suggested.
4. Outlining Assignments
Outlining assignments ranked lower than writing drafts for how B2B marketers use generative AI. Marketers often write their outlines based on what they want covered. Those outlines are what they input into AI to write that first rough draft. By having a human write the outline, you can guarantee it is on track with your brand and goes in the direction you need it to.
However, if it’s a new topic or you don’t have a specific direction you want to go, you can ask ChatGPT to craft an outline for you. The outline will look very similar to the structure others wrote. You will still want to tweak it if you want to create unique content. Most importantly, you will want to optimize the headings to include your keywords to improve your SEO ranking.
5. Proofreading Content
Humans make errors — even human editors. Having AI help proofread your content can help catch those errors. For example, Grammarly can catch minor punctuation and grammar errors or provide suggestions to improve text.
While Grammarly does provide an added safety net, writers should never replace their human editors. AI makes mistakes. It often suggests word substitutions that make NO sense whatsoever. It also does not account for stylistic choice. Like. When. You. Want. To. Emphasize. A. Phrase. It would mark that sentence wrong, even though the writer chose it to make a point.
That’s why Grammarly works best alongside human editors, not as a replacement.
6. Generating Media
Have you ever struggled to find the perfect image? You might see a photo with the correct scene, but the people are the wrong age for your demographic. You might be marketing to medical professionals, but the images are for the wrong medical field.
Generative images and media always provide the perfect image. Almost. You can input specific instructions for the demographic to ensure it looks just like the key decision-makers in your industry. Then, generative AI will create an image that meets those qualifications.
While this is a helpful tool, it has its limitations. As the following image shows (what is going on with the laptop logo and its feet?), AI isn’t perfect, and you may still need to consult your favorite media agency for those images and limit the use of AI image generation.
Keep Your Generative AI for Marketing on Track
While generative AI works well for many B2B marketing uses, it’s imperfect. It’s a tool your human writers, editors, and designers can use alongside their personal experience. Generative AI in B2B marketing can improve productivity and improve the efficiency of your content creation process. However, only human authors infuse authority, experience, and originality into your B2B content.
If you’re ready to level up your B2B content, reach out to Express Writers. We have human writers who will complement your AI processes so you can benefit from the best of both worlds.
Artificial Intelligence has reduced writing anything from blog posts to white papers to a few clicks of a button. A few well-prepped prompts, and you’re off to the races.
Rather than slog an entire day to write a measly thousand ones, AI can spit out tens of blog posts an hour.
So, should you learn to write after the AI revolution?
Learning to write remains a worthy pursuit for anyone looking to communicate with fellow human beings in any capacity. Whether you’re an executive, a business owner, or a freelance blogger.
AI may have lowered the entry bar and given everyone the words, but they’re only a tool. They are instrumental in sourcing and organizing ideas. Still, they can be a hit or a miss when writing compelling pieces. That’s because despite sponging off immense quantities of data, AI tools can’t quite connect the dots like humans do.
They can’t feel the gravity of a profound moment and express it like you would. They can’t bring to the table your lived experience, the granularities, the simple nuances that resonate with the readers and keep them riveted to the page.
Simply put, AI tools miss out on the granularities that make us human. And therefore, the capacity to capture them in the written word.
As such, AI may replace some writing while accelerating your capacity to write professionally.
Why Learn How to Write
Writing is hard, and for most people, a hair’s breadth is shy of a Herculean task. That’s because writing is an art. There’s more to the craft than stringing words into sentences. Or wielding your semicolons and colons with the skill of a Samurai.
The core purpose of the written word is to drive communication. To create a resonance with the readers. To draw the reader’s attention not to the words on a page but to the underlying message.
In fact, the best writing is invisible. It fades into the background while sucking in the reader with its compelling message. The best writing persuades and compels the reader to act.
A well-written page can move a reader from a curious onlooker to a fastidious consumer who buys tens of thousands of dollars of your products annually. It can persuade tons of customers to pick your products over the competition because they resonate with the message.
But what if you’re not running a business? Polishing your capacity to write professionally can skyrocket your career chances. A survey covering 120 of America’s top employers found poorly written applications a “figurative kiss of death.” One Human Resource practitioner termed them “extremely prejudicial.”
Large corporations are unlikely to hire applicants with poor writing skills because over 60% of their salaried employees have some writing responsibilities. These companies use written communications to make business decisions. The survey estimates that companies spend billions annually to correct employee writing deficiencies.
With smartphones and social media encouraging people to be more expressive, you can turn everyday escapades into a compelling read with polished writing skills.
How to Successfully Write for the Web
While learning to write professionally is an all-around important skill, writing for the web is an entirely different beast. With web content, you’re wading into an uber-competitive landscape. Google estimates there are about one billion websites on the internet — all competing for eyeballs.
As such, you must adhere to the rules of the web to stand a chance of connecting with your ideal readers. Faced with limitless choices, online readers are a picky bunch with low attention spans. You have precisely 8 seconds to grab the reader’s attention, or you’ve lost them forever.
That’s why online content — web pages, blogs, landing pages — play by different rules. The traditional magazine writing style has no place in this highly dynamic and super competitive landscape.
Besides making sure your content is factually accurate and informative, you must tailor it to cater to the needs of your audience. It’s simply not enough to lay out the facts. You must weave them into gripping stories that compel and persuade.
And that takes patience and practice. The adage goes, everything worth doing is worth doing well. Much like great novelists, great content writers aren’t born — their horn their skills the old-fashioned way — through sweat and tears. It’s the equivalent of becoming an Olympian. You join an elite group of people who can shape opinions and build empires with their written words.
But first, you must painstakingly hone your skills and perfect your craft amidst mind-numbing setbacks. For a rookie, learning to write is the equivalent of becoming a figure skating champion — you’ll endure many a fall along your journey.
But the rewards are well worth it. Once you’ve proven your writing chops, you become a renaissance man. You can apply them everywhere and profit from them for life.
Learn to Write Like a Pro
Professional writing is radically different from what they teach in school. School essays are more about showcasing your vocabulary and writing skills. In a word, school essays are all about you. Conversely, online writing is all about the reader—you’re out to solve a problem for the reader. And that takes a while to master.
You may need to unlearn your previous writing skills and internalize the new approach. That takes practice and dedication. A labor of love — you must go all in and give it your best.
Luckily, perfecting your writing skills doesn’t falls under the 10,000-hour rule purview. Your writing style will improve drastically if you consistently and diligently put in the work.
Writing is a multifaceted process. Breaking it down into components makes learning to write less daunting and more manageable.
1. Set Yourself Up for Success with the Right Tools
Your writing environment matters a great deal. Set it up properly, and it’ll help your flow and get you into the zone.
Basically, you need a computer setup with a word processor — Google Docs, MS Word, or TextEdit. A reliable internet connection is vital because writing is a research-intensive endeavor.
Simply put, writing for the web is primarily research and then compiling your research findings into a compelling piece. Naturally, the internet is a minefield of distraction — from cat videos to social media notifications and new email popups. One wrong click can distract you for hours.
Luckily, there are a few tools to keep you from going down this rabbit hole. Specialty tools such as Ommwriter and Onetab serve as blinders when writing. They help minimize distractions and create a writing-friendly environment when accessing the internet.
Try writing with or without music and see what works for you. Most writers like soft classical music, while others swear by heavy metal music.
Of course, turning off your phone keeps friends and loved ones from breaking your flow.
2. Establish a Writing Routine
Research has shown building new habits takes longer than the mythical 21 days. You stand a higher chance of mastering your craft if you practice your craft every day, especially when starting out. Building a routine down to the time and amount of time you’ll practice helps ease the growing pains. Keeping your initial sessions short — sub 30 minutes — helps reduce the resistance while building consistency.
Don’t fret if you struggle. Even the greats such as Stephen King had to slay these dragons in the quest for greatness. Slogging through it will instill discipline and keep you accountable.
3. Polish Your Writing Strategy
Yeah, you need a writing strategy. Most people think of writing as an avalanche of words flowing from your mind as your fingers struggle to keep up, far from it.
Much like writing an essay for school, it takes strategy to write for the web.
You’ll need to think about what you need to write — what issue are you addressing? Which questions are answering? What type of answers resonate with your audience?
Professional writing takes dedicated planning. Seasoned writers often skip this step but that’s because they’ve internalized the art of structuring a piece.
Attempting to skip this step as a beginner will leave you drowning in words. Your ideas may be jumbled up, and the piece may lack flow, making it unreadable. That may crush your dream of writing for the web rather quickly.
Outlines allow you to order your thoughts and logically plan your content. They let you put down your main ideas so you can later flesh them out with supportive evidence.
Creating an outline means you’re not starting from a blank page. It saves the dread that comes from staring at a blinking cursor on an empty page. It provides a starting point and ingrains structure to let you write better and faster by training your focus on the relevant topics.
4. Write Compellingly to Make Your Content Engaging
Once you’ve crafted your outline and all your structure in place, it’s time to flesh out the piece. Use well-crafted sentences to turn the research information into a compelling read. Focus purely on getting the words on the page.
Don’t forget the cardinal rule of online writing — don’t edit yourself as you go. You’ll come around to it later.
For now, prioritize engaging your reader. But how do you do that?
Web visitors love substance. They often bookmark or share content that addresses their problem head-on, offers a solution, and recommends a product or service.
Craft your introduction to be attention-grabbing. It could be a unique angle, an anecdote, a personal story, or anything to spark a reader’s curiosity and intrigue.
These proven techniques can help you churn out helpful content that compels the reader to act.
Walk a mile in your reader’s shoes: Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. What do you consider high-quality and helpful content when searching for a solution online? Chances are there’s an overlap between what you like and what your audience likes.
Don’t pontificate: The ultimate goal is to persuade, not berate your readers. As such, you shouldn’t talk down to them or employ hard-selling techniques. Find out what information your audience finds valuable and present it like a friendly yet knowledgeable expert.
Learn to write killer intro: With online writing, your intro does most of the heavy lifting. Research shows have 8 seconds to convince the reader or lose them. Lead each piece with an arresting hook that’ll stop them in their tracks and compel them to keep reading.
Get personal: Consider every piece a conversation with a dear friend. Use jokes, personal experiences, or anecdotes to reinforce your points. Make sure the readers feel like you’re sharing a part of your life with them.
Be detailed: Make your content stand out by backing each claim you make. That allows your content to stand out in a space riddled with shallow, fluffy content. Supporting your claims with irrefutable claims paints you as a subject-matter expert, a key requirement in building trust with your readers.
5. Have a Second Go at Your Work
After pouring your heart and soul into the piece, now comes the hard part — editing.
Aka, slaughter your darlings.
Editing is especially challenging because it requires you to mercilessly mow down the words you’ve laboriously created. But it makes the difference between okay writing and exceptional pieces.
In writing circles, the first draft is popularly known as the ugly duckling. You must edit it until it morphs into a graceful swan. That takes several editing cycles.
Ideally, you should leave your “ugly first draft” to breathe, preferably overnight.
Since editing is a complex process its best to break it down into smaller steps. Sequentially editing for facts, clarity, flow, style, grammar, and typos makes the process more manageable.
Reading the piece out loud lets you catch any details that may escape your eye, such as awkward phrases and sentences.
The editing process also lets you optimize the piece for online visibility. Provide links to your original sources for specific statistics, sprinkle the keywords naturally, and link to other pages on the client’s website.
6. Keep Refining Your Skills
Ernest Hemmingway said it best… “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
Writing is like a game with limitless levels — there’s always one more to conquer. You must consistently hone and develop your writing skills.
Learning to write mirrors the quest for a six-pack abs. It’s not a once-and-done affair. After shredding the fat and defining the packs, you can’t stop because all the hard work will fade and get covered up.
Journaling and blogging let you painlessly hone your skills and keep your writing chops sharp and on point.
That’s because reading provides fodder for your brain. And is the basis for creativity. Contrary to popular opinion, creativity isn’t an innate talent. Rather, it’s the ability to connect disparate ideas compellingly. Therefore, the more you read, the more ideas and concepts you will have in your creativity toolkit.
Reading great writers, blogs, and magazines also exposes you to a variety of writing styles. It’s a chance to study accomplished writers and understand how they express their ideas and captivate their audiences.
Stand a Cut Above the Rest
Learning to write can be challenging, but the results are well worth it. In the world of online marketing, well-crafted content amounts to a license to print money. Polishing your craft into an art form lets you build a cult-like following for your brand and keeps your cash register ringing.
If you need help along the way, our professional writers are here to help. Talk to us about your content needs — we’d love to help.
You can go from “We should try this and see if people respond” to “Most people respond favorably to this strategy. Let’s also invest in it.”
We are bringing you the latest data on blogging. As you move through 2024 and beyond, use these blogging statistics to keep your blogging strategy current and focused on what users want most, optimized for the most popular devices.
General Blogging Statistics
Blogging is popular globally. Blogs account for 31.6% of 1.9 billion websites. Here are a few statistics to help you understand how popular blogs are and how people use this effective platform in marketing.
61% of B2B content marketers regularly meet with their content creation team, usually meeting daily or weekly. This additional alignment is crucial for B2B marketing as marketers often employ strategies such as account-based marketing that rely on a well-aligned team to craft personalized experiences.
58% of B2B marketers were able to increase their sales and revenue from content marketing in 2023.
66% of B2B marketers prioritize audience needs and pain points above conversion because B2B marketing builds relationships with loyal clients rather than make quick sales.
B2B blog posts tend to be 12% longer than other blog posts.
Organic search is one of the main reasons marketers add blogging to their list of strategies. SEO prepares blog content for search engines to rank well in search results, generating higher traffic rates.
Here are a few statistics that give you insights into the interactions of blogging and SEO.
Active blogs are rewarded with 434% more indexed pages and 97% more inbound links. The indexed pages and inbound links significantly improve a website’s search engine ranking, demonstrating the importance of keeping your blog active to generate consistent traffic.
Blogs with 6-13-word headlines drive more traffic than shorter or longer ones.
Google prefers updated, relevant content. That is why 34% of bloggers update their blog content regularly to strengthen their traffic results.
About 75% of search engine users don’t look beyond the first search engine results page. In addition, 31% of users click on the first organic search result. Because of this startling number, marketers strive to snag one of those top search engine spots to see a healthy traffic stream.
While most blogs have a higher word count, 75% of readers prefer blog posts that are 1,000 words or under. Yet, articles with higher word counts tend to lead to better results.
Only 3% of bloggers regularly publish posts over 2,000 words.
Despite the longer word count, the average reader only spends 52 seconds on a blog post.
Consumers read blog content three times more than emails.
About 61% of marketers host their blogs and websites on WordPress.
Images are essential for engaging readers. Three-quarters of bloggers use between one and three images in their blog posts.
When bloggers use images, they receive 94% more views than posts with no visuals.
Video content is growing in popularity. Videos can drive 50 times more organic search traffic than text posts. Embedding videos into your blog posts to see the best of both worlds.
Who is writing and reading blogs, and is your audience among those readers? We gathered some of the most telling demographic details about blog readers and a few about blog writers.
While some bloggers use their blogs to generate income, it’s often just one of several content marketing strategies to promote a business’s products and services.
About 90% of marketers use blogging in their marketing strategies.
Blogging is a valuable source of new leads, with companies that blog generating 67% more leads than those that do not.
Blogging is the third most popular marketing strategy. Video and eBooks are the first and second most popular strategies.
ROI of Blogging
One of the biggest blogging challenges is accurately measuring ROI. Because blogging often doesn’t produce direct results, such as leading to a sale within the content, tracking the impact of blogging on sales requires more data and tracking the user journey.
Most internet users (80%) say they engage with social media posts and blog posts, showing you have an active audience ready to engage with your posts if you are able to reach them through SEO and advertising.
Blogging generates 55% more website visitors than static websites.
The most popular way to monetize blogging is through Google AdSense. Affiliate marketing is the second most popular monetization strategy. High-income bloggers tend to sell their own products or services.
Blogging investments tend to pay out what you pour into the strategy. On average, spending over $4,000 per post is 2.6 times more likely to see positive results than spending less than $500 per post. That cost includes a writer and a marketing team, a manager, a graphic designer, and an editor to ensure you publish top-quality content.
Blogging and Mobile Devices
How have mobile devices and new technology influenced blogging? Smartphones and voice assistants have shaken up blogging since content creators must now consider mobile browsing experiences and desktop viewers. They also need to account for voice searches when optimizing for search engines.
Use these statistics to help you invest in mobile optimization in a way that will most benefit your audience.
Mobile devices generate 63% of the US’s organic search traffic.
Users browsing websites and blog posts on their mobile devices spend 40% less time on the site.
If you plan to convert users using your blog posts, remember that 61% of consumers are likelier to purchase from mobile-friendly sites.
About 25% of sales come from mobile devices compared to desktops.
Blogging and Social Media
Blogging and social media often work hand-in-hand to drive traffic to your website. Look at the current social media landscape and the future of this relationship.
69% of bloggers allow readers to share their blog posts on social media.
Blogging and AI Statistics
AI is becoming increasingly popular in blogging. Its generative features allow businesses to write more in less time. However, there are also downsides to AI blogging, such as generic content, factual inaccuracies, and a lack of human emotion.
Here are a few statistics that will help you understand where AI is changing blogging and the potential future of blogging and AI.
AI marketing can increase ROI by 70% because AI can create more efficient processes, cutting the costs of content creation and marketing.
About 58% of companies plan to incorporate an AI SEO strategy this year.
Put These Blog Statistics to Good Use
Blogging will not go anywhere anytime soon. It’s moving in the opposite direction, with significant growth expected over the next few years. Is your blogging strategy growing along with its popularity?
We can help you revitalize your blogging strategy, using the latest data and techniques to get the most eyes on your content.
Contact us to learn about our different content services and to find one that matches your needs.
If you are performing a home renovation and run into an issue, what’s typically your first response? It’s probably to grab your phone and type in a search. If you’re experienced in repairs, you might search “How to put in dry wall,” or you might search “Dry wall repairman near me.”
Both those searches will pull up a unique list of relevant content businesses create to either educate you or help connect you to someone who can help.
As a business, you can play a role in where your online content appears and who sees it. It’s not just up to chance. Through careful content optimization, you can improve your ranking. One of the most crucial parts of the optimization process is choosing the right keywords for your audience that will appear in search results.
Learn how to choose keywords for SEO using just five simple rules.
What’s the Big Deal with Keywords?
Search engine optimization are strategies you perform to prepare your content for Google search, hoping you will rank high in search results. Since over half of web traffic comes from organic searches, optimizing your website for search should be a priority. However, you don’t want to appear in just any search results. You want to rank high in searches your ideal audience performs, ideally landing on the first page. The first page of Google search results receives the highest number of clicks.
Google’s algorithm uses over 200 factors when ranking websites in search results. While each factor plays a role, one crucial factor is your keywords.
Keywords for search engine optimization will help Google identify your content’s topic to ensure you appear in front of your target audience. You can use them on web pages or create blog posts to target keyword opportunities and increase traffic from those searches.
A common misconception with SEO keywords is that they are terms you can input in your page’s code, telling Google, “Hey, this is the content’s topic!”
Keywords are far more subtle than that. They blend right in with your content. There is no signal telling Google which terms are your keywords. However, by strategically placing them in your title, intro, and key areas in your content, Google’s algorithm will take note of the phrase.
However, ranking for the keyword relies on you also performing other SEO strategies to build your authority, create quality content, and build trust with your audience. If you have those other strategies in place, selecting the most relevant and quality keyword fits the last puzzle piece in place for Google to rank you well in relevant searches.
5 Tips for Choosing Quality Keywords
Here are a few of our top tips to help you appear in the RIGHT searches at the RIGHT spot in front of the RIGHT audience.
Use these to learn how to choose SEO keywords that will rank in Google.
Tip 1: Understand What Your Audience Is Searching
While you can create your own keywords that match your topic, those keywords may not connect with your audience. Always start your keyword research by using a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs to discover search queries your audience is performing rather than guessing at what terms to focus on.
Every time you type a search into Google, it records it. Those are called search queries. Analyzing records of those queries will help you decide what phrases to use in your content. When you use the exact words your audience is searching for, you are more likely to appear as a search result than if you use random phrases throughout your content.
Selecting just one strong keyword in your content is a fantastic start, but you still have more you can do to help Google identify your content’s topic and rank that content in the most relevant searches.
In addition to a primary keyword, you will also use keyword variations throughout your content. These are synonyms of your SEO keywords and phrases that commonly appear alongside them.
For example, if you target the keyword “best phone,” you might also use the phrases “best smartphone” and “best iPhone.” Using synonyms avoids repeating the exact phrase throughout the article, which Google often sees as spam. It can also help you rank for more searches related to your primary topic.
You can find synonyms and related keywords in your keyword research tool or by looking in the People Also Ask section of Google.
Image from SEMrush
Tip 3: Focus on High Traffic SEO Keywords
Not all phrases are of equal value when you choose keywords for SEO. Some keywords bring in more traffic than others.
Take a look at these two keywords. “Email marketing software” has 4,400 people searching the phrase monthly, while “Online marketing software” has 170 monthly searches. Targeting high-traffic keywords will bring more traffic to your site if you can rank in those searches.
Image from SEMrush
Tip 4: Go for Low Competition SEO Keywords
Keyword traffic isn’t the only data that comes into play when strategically choosing a keyword. You also want to consider their keyword difficulty score. This score is a percentage of 100 that will tell you how many other sites wrote content on the same topic and whether those sites already have a solid online presence. A site with a strong brand is more likely to rank higher in search results than a new site or one with little authority. If you want to rank for a search, you want to avoid competing against businesses with significantly higher brand authority.
For example, what happens when you search for “laptop repair?” You will see big names like Best Buy and HP repair services pop up on the first page. A small laptop repair business would struggle to gain a high-ranking spot for that keyword. However, a term like “laptop screen repair near me” has far less competition, mainly because you are only competing against other local shops with a digital presence who might also create content on that topic.
If you have a strong brand, you can try to rank for high-competition keywords. However, if you’re a single blogger or a new business, you will want medium or low-difficulty keywords.
Image from SEMrush
Tip 5: Consider the User’s Intent
User intent is the purpose behind their search. A user asking Google what’s in a chicken parmesan has a very different intent than one asking Google where to find chicken parmesan. One user is looking for information, most likely trying to find a recipe. The second user is looking for a restaurant, so they are ready and willing to pay for chicken parmesan.
When searching SEO keywords, look at what intent your tool notes the keyword as. The four search intents are:
Navigational: Looking for a specific website or page.
Informational: Looking for information or education.
Commercial: Users are interested in buying and are researching their options.
Transactional: Users are ready to buy and know what they want.
If you don’t have an SEO tool, you can also use logic to determine why someone might search for a phrase. Performing the exact search can show you what type of content appears, again helping you understand what users are looking for.
By providing content that matches your users’ intent, Google is more likely to display it first as it will see it as more relevant.
For instance, if your users have commercial or transactional intent, your article should be product heavy. Informational intent content, the article should focus on educating the user, not promoting products and services.
Image from SEMrush
Choose Keywords for SEO That Your Audience Is Searching
Are you ready to optimize your content for Google?
Begin by performing keyword research before diving into content creation. Keyword research helps you identify those high-traffic, low-competition search queries that will keep you ranking high in search results.
If you need help finding the most relevant and highest-quality keywords, add our SEO research package to your next order, and our content strategist will help you.
