Marketers shouldn’t discount the power of long-form blogs because they’re conducive to high levels of engagement from potential consumers.
Last year, digital data collection provider Research Now conducted a study in the U.K. on blogs’ influence on consumers. It found that the decades-old medium still has pull. According to Research Now, two out of three people read blogs at least several times a week. What’s more, 45 percent have reached out to a blogger to inquire about a product when considering a purchase, and 84 percent buy products based on the content they find on blogs.
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From Ted Murphy, IZEA Founder & CEO
Ted Murphy, chief executive (CEO) of content development and influencer marketing at IZEA, believes that blogs could perform much better if publishers would treat them more like editorial content. He bases this theory on a two-year long analysis of the lifespan of blog posts. The study, commissioned by IZEA and conducted by Halverson Group, found that blog posts continue to drive traffic and generate impressions up to 700 days after they go live.
Therefore, the lifespan of a post is almost 24 times the current common measurement of 30 days. While blog post traffic spikes within the first week, and nearly three quarters of all impressions are generated in its first month online, posts continue to drive traffic two years later.
“We knew from looking at our campaigns that there was long-term value outside of that 30-day window,” Murphy says, “but we haven’t had definitive data to back it up. Now we know that blogs continue to deliver for years.” One of the biggest benefits of long-form content is that it’s indexed by search engines and becomes part of a site’s archives in perpetuity. By taking sponsored posts down too soon, Murphy says, publishers are limiting their potential and selling their advertisers short. “My hope is that people will look at how they’re creating and measuring campaigns, both on the buy and sell side, to maximize for long-term value.”
