Full disclosure, I think my team and I are a little embarrassed. Believe it or not, blogging is kind of our main thing here at The HubSpot BLOG — so the fact that it‘s taken over a decade for us to put together our first-ever report on the state of blogging isn’t the best look.
But hey! As that Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.” That's why we surveyed over 500 marketers across various industries and company scales to get a pulse on the current state and future fate of blogging.
We covered all of the big bases, including:
- Do companies still publish blog content?
- Why do companies blog?
- What kind of content are companies publishing?
- Where does blog traffic come from?
- How is AI transforming the practice?
- How are blogs adjusting in the era of E-E-A-T?
- Where is blogging headed?
- So much more!
Check it out! Yeah!
Do companies still publish blog content?
Short answer? Yeah, they do — for good reason.
Our survey indicates that 65% of marketers are employed by companies that maintain blogs, and they generally post pretty diligently. Our research found that:
- 22% of businesses that maintain blogs publish content on a daily basis.
- 37% publish two to three times per week.
- 30% publish weekly.
- 7% publish bi-weekly.
- 5% publish monthly.
Most of those respondents also say blogging is still pretty crucial to their broader marketing strategies. Of our respondents whose companies publish blog content:
- 47% cite it as being very important.
- 46% cite it as being important.
- 5% cite it as being neutral.
- 2% cite it as being less important.
That‘s why blogging remains a pretty significant staple of many marketing orgs’ budgets. According to our research:
- 24% of marketers from blog-producing businesses say they dedicate less than 10% of their marketing budget to blogging.
- 31% say they allocate 11-20% to it.
- 25% say they allocate 21-30% to it.
- 18% say they allocate more than 30% to it.
And those figures make sense when you consider the returns blogging generates for several businesses. Our research found that:
- 50% of marketers from businesses that maintain blogs say they saw a higher ROI from blogging in 2024, relative to 2023.
- 31% said it was roughly the same year over year.
- 15% saw a lower ROI.
So it makes sense that a lot of blog-publishing businesses are leaning into the strategy. According to our study:
- 45% of marketers from blog-maintaining businesses say their companies are going to invest more budget in blogging in 2025, relative to 2024.
- Only 13% are going to invest less.
- 40% are going to keep their investment consistent year over year.
So by the looks of it, blogging is still popular and not going anywhere anytime soon — but why is that the case? We dug into that as well.
Why do companies blog?
Blogging is a pretty versatile practice. It can help cover a lot of bases on the marketing front, but our research indicates that most businesses that leverage it are doing it to garner attention. Our study found that:
- 66% of blog-maintaining businesses publish content for brand awareness.
- 53% do it for customer engagement.
- 49% do it for lead generation.
- 34% do it for SEO-related purposes.
- 26% do it to project thought leadership.
Naturally, those goals align with the KPIs most of those companies use to gauge their content's success. We found that more brand awareness-oriented metrics were the most popular with businesses that publish blog content. According to our research:
- 54% of blog-maintaining businesses use pageviews to measure their blogs' success.
- 53% use social shares.
- 46% use conversion rate.
- 45% use time on page.
- 22% use backlinks.
Ultimately, blog content is — first and foremost — a promotional play for most businesses. While some use it for hard conversions, most blog-producing businesses are just looking for another avenue to get their brand in front of potential customers. While those goals are generally consistent, there are a lot of ways to achieve them.
“Blog content” is a pretty broad catch-all that covers several content formats — and the marketers we surveyed saw value in a wide range of them.
What kind of content are companies publishing?
A company blog can be an excellent medium for establishing longer-term credibility through evergreen content and immediate clout with more trend-responsive articles, and the marketers we surveyed generally publish a mix of the two. According to our research:
- 40% of outlets that produce blog content produce evergreen and timely content at a 50/50 split.
- 24% split their content 75% evergreen and 25% timely.
- 18% split their content 75% timely and 25% evergreen.
- 7% publish evergreen content exclusively
- 2% publish timely exclusively.
Our research also indicates that blog-producing businesses see solid returns from a fairly wide range of different content formats. Our study found that:
- 51% of blog-producing businesses find that how-to guides perform well for them.
- 45% find that industry news performs well for them.
- 42% find that case studies perform well for them.
- 34% find that encyclopedic articles explaining concepts relevant to their verticals perform well for them.
- 23% find that product listicles perform well for them.
But how you structure the content you produce is a bit of a non-factor if you can't distribute it effectively — and as any content strategist will tell you, that is one of the most (if not the most) challenging aspects of maintaining a blog.
Where does blog traffic come from?
Getting engaged eyes on your content is every bit as tricky as it is essential — and in a landscape facing seismic shifts prompted by factors like volatility in organic search and the popularization of short-form content, maintaining a diverse range of distribution channels is transitioning from nice-to-have to need-to-have for bloggers.
The marketers we surveyed reflected that sentiment. Our study found that:
- 83% of businesses that maintain blogs distribute their content through social media.
- 47% leverage email newsletters.
- 47% leverage paid ads.
- 36% leverage organic search.
- 33% leverage influencers.
- 23% leverage paid search.
Our research also indicates that businesses with blogs are generally split on sourcing traffic organically versus through paid avenues. Our survey found that:
- 38% of businesses with blogs mostly sourced traffic organically.
- 21% sourced it primarily through paid avenues.
- 36% sourced it with a mostly equal combination of the two.
While we're on the subject of nice-to-haves becoming need-to-haves, let‘s take a look at how AI is playing into businesses’ blog strategies.
How does AI play in?
AI — specifically generative AI — is probably the most disruptive element ever introduced into the world of content marketing (and maybe the world in general, but that's neither here nor there.)
It's presenting a real “adapt or die” moment for bloggers, and our respondents seem to understand that. Our research indicates that:
- Only 4% of bloggers never use AI tools to support content creation.
- 21% use it to support less than 25% of content creation.
- 37% use it to support 25-50% of content creation.
- 19% use it to support 51-75% of content creation.
- 16% use it to support more than 75% of content creation.
Bloggers also use AI at various points in the content creation process. Our study found that:
- 43% use AI to support editing and proofreading.
- 38% use it to support outline creation.
- 37% use it to support first-draft writing.
- 31% use it to support image creation.
- 30% use it to support topic research.
- 26% use it to support meta-description generation.
Of the AI resources available to bloggers, the most popular were:
- ChatGPT with 68% of respondents referencing using it for content creation.
- Google Gemini with 50%.
- Copy.ai with 13%.
- Claude with 12%.
- Jasper with 11%.
- HubGPT with 8%.
- 5% used other resources.
As you can probably assume, one of the primary benefits of incorporating AI tools into bloggers' workflows has been an increase in content production volume. Our research found that:
- 19% of respondents saw their production significantly increase after folding AI resources into their content production.
- 48% saw it moderately increase.
- 17% saw no change in content production volume.
- 9% saw it moderately decrease.
- 3% saw it significantly decrease.
AI‘s emergence isn’t the only element that recently rocked the world of content marketing. These past couple of years saw Google pivot to E-E-A-T (Experience-Expertise-Authority-Trust) — a new search-grading criteria that places extra emphasis on relevant, first-hand experience with the subject matter bloggers cover.
How are blogs E-E-A-T-ifying?
Several blogs have found themselves scrambling to adjust to these new standards, and our respondents took a range of approaches to get there.
One key factor in appeasing the E-E-A-T gods is establishing author credibility, and respondents whose companies publish blog content went about that a few ways. Our research found that:
- 43% of blog-producing businesses established author expertise by referencing published works and citations.
- 42% used author bios with credentials.
- 40% included links to professional profiles.
- 27% referenced industry certifications.
- 8% were unsure.
Incorporating research and data is also a big help when E-E-A-T-ifying blog content — making it one of the more popular approaches our respondents took. According to our study:
- 8% of our respondents featured data in 0-20% of their blog content.
- 23% featured it in 21-40% of their content.
- 28% featured it in 41-60% of their content.
- 26% featured it in 61-80% of their content
- 13% featured it in 81-100% of their content.
- 3% were unsure.
However, loading your content with data might not be enough to cut it on SERPs nowadays. Again, the additional “E” in E-E-A-T stands for “experience” — meaning firsthand insight is pretty mission-critical when trying to make headway in the current search landscape. According to our research:
- 45% of blog-producing businesses project firsthand experience by highlighting personal experiences from team members.
- 36% source original quotes from subject matter experts.
- 35% reference case studies from actual clients.
- 33% feature expert interviews.
- 25% share product testing results.
- 10% don't specifically document experience.
- 6% were unsure.
Ultimately, E-E-A-T represents what might be the most monumental shift in organic search ever, so naturally, it‘s fundamentally shaped several blogs’ content development process. According to our research, these are the primary ways our respondents have adapted:
- 39% increased citation of primary sources.
- 34% implemented expert review processes.
- 36% added original research and data.
- 31% implemented enhanced fact-checking procedures.
- 20% added author credentials and bios.
- 12% didn't implement any significant changes.
- 7% were unsure.
So with all of the shifting tides, turmoil, and uncertainty that‘s been shaping the landscape of content marketing as of late, there’s really only one question to ask — where is blogging headed?
Where is blogging headed?
Well, despite all of the recent headwinds and “all-over-the-boardness” that a lot of my fellow content strategists can speak to, most of the marketers we surveyed were optimistic about the future of blogging.
Our research found that:
- 56% of marketers who work for blog-maintaining businesses say they see the role of blogging in their content marketing strategy expanding in the future.
- 32% say it will stay the same.
- 7% they'll be reducing focus on it.
- 5% are unsure.
Still, content marketing is ever-evolving, and businesses can‘t lean strictly on their blogs to drive engagement going forward — and most of our respondents recognize that. That’s why they're also investing in other content formats. According to our study:
- 81% of blog-producing businesses are also investing in video.
- 53% are investing in podcasts.
- 46% are investing in newsletters.
- 39% are investing in webinars.
- 20% are investing in ebooks.
So what is the state of blogging in 2025?
Ultimately, if our research is any indication, blogging is far from obsolete halfway through the 2020s. A lot of changes have rocked the practice in recent years — the popularization of AI and the introduction of E-E-A-T criteria being two of the most transformative — but bloggers appear to be adapting.
Blogging is still one of the most effective vehicles marketing orgs have at their disposal for facilitating key goals like lead generation and generating brand awareness. And the fact that the marketers we surveyed still see enough value in the practice to keep investing in it speaks to how versatile and productive it can be.
So what's the state of blogging? In a word — solid.
It's ever-changing and fundamentally different than it used to be … but still solid.