Behold the lowly blogger: a person whose pockets house more lint than gold.
Though blogs have proliferated, a mere 8.7 percent can afford to belly up to the bar for paid promotional services.
So what do they do? In the U.S., bloggers increasingly lean on social media marketing to drive traffic to their sites and content.
“When it comes to driving traffic to their posts, 93.2 percent of U.S. bloggers rely on social media marketing,” reports eMarketer. “Over half of respondents (56.6 percent) use search engine optimization (SEO) and almost 42.6 percent use email marketing. Only 8.7 percent use paid services, such as native advertising or a pay-per-click (PPC) ad channel.”
U.S. bloggers are keeping it simple (and cheap), whether that’s by using content like images to amplify a post or by harnessing social media marketing to boost readership.
Few can afford the bells and whistles today’s brands are using to drive traffic.
“The largest share (72.4 percent) of U.S. bloggers included an image in their blog posts,” notes eMarketer. “Moreover, 48 percent used more than one image, indicating that imagery does play an important role in blog posts. Roughly only 12 percent included a video in their post, and even fewer used audio.”
But blogging — simple as it may be — does attract readers.
eMarketer estimates that this year, 28.3 million people in the U.S. will update a blog at least monthly. And about 79.2 million people will read them this year.
