Including blogging as a part of your marketing strategy can bring you more customers. According to our State of Marketing report, blogs are among the top three marketing channels that deliver the highest ROI.
But it is not enough to know that blogging can increase your credibility, SEO, leads and revenue. Finding out why people read blogs can help you make your blog effective and profitable.
To find out why people read blogs, we surveyed 298 people across the United States.
Here's what we know.
Blogging is alive and well.
If I had a dollar for every time I read, saw, or heard that “blogging is dead,” I would be extremely rich.
This is not true.
In a recent survey, we asked 325 people to tell us how often they read blogs, and 29% said they read 1 to 4 times per month.
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Before you get caught up in this positive data, remember that what worked a few years ago may not work today.
While blogging is still incredibly valuable, how you approach it matters more than ever. You'll need to work harder than before to get people to read your content.
In our survey, which asked participants to select why they consume blog content, options included:
- To learn something unrelated to my career.
- To entertain or pass the time.
- To solve problems related to my career or industry.
- To learn about news and trends in your job industry.
Looking at the number of leads generated by business blogs, you can assume that a lot of people read blogs to learn about things related to their industry.
But it might surprise you that only 29% percent of consumers read blogs to learn something related to their industry.
According to our survey results, more people are motivated to read blogs that teach them something new.
While 62.2% chose this argument, 51.1% said they read blogs for entertainment, and 42% read blogs to learn about news or trends in their job industry.
Additionally, 10% said they read blogs to fulfill a reading obligation.
These results show that you need to create informative and entertaining content to win blog readers. Content created just to sell your offer won't cut it.
In this blog post, I will tell you about the top three reasons consumers read blogs. I'll also show you how to create a blog with content that meets your reader's needs as well as drives brand awareness.
3 reasons people read blogs
1. People read blogs to learn something new.
By far, the most common reason people read blog posts is to learn something new. This result doesn't surprise me at all. Our survey shows that people prefer posts about guides, step-by-step processes, tutorial videos or fast facts.
Such posts can also receive large amounts of search traffic as people search for instructions on how to do things on Google every day.
Even when posts aren't informing people about doing something on a detailed level, blogs that discuss complex studies, trends, or topics that people are less familiar with can help someone Can increase curiosity.
Psychology research shows that humans crave valuable information, just as they crave food or money. Tap into this need by creating content that creates curiosity about your brand, service or products.
For example, on our marketing blog, we can show our readers how to use a new social media network like Instagram's threads.
By doing this, marketers or social media users who want to learn how Threads works can find our content in search or on social media and read it.
With a broader scope, our blog can create multiple pieces of content that discuss a trend from multiple angles. For example, when TikTok emerged, we wrote a few blog posts to answer common questions from marketers, like:
Apart from helping our readers, trend-related blogs let us as marketers highlight our research and knowledge. This may also show that HubSpot is a reliable company that sells quality products in the marketing industry.
2. People read blogs for entertainment.
While people want knowledge, they also like entertainment. Every day, people can read blogs that tell interesting stories, make them laugh, or engage them in some other way. This is where multimedia content shines.
As our survey revealed, 32% of respondents say that video, imagery, or other multimedia are some of the most interesting elements that motivate them to read blog content.
As a marketer, you may ask, “How can I entertain my readers while keeping my blog professional?” There are a number of ways to do this.
One is to create fun infographics about viral trends in your industry. Although your readers may not be invested in the trend, the imagery and information may entertain them.
For example, in one of our posts, we highlighted funny memes that marketers use in their campaigns.
This example below is entertaining because it shows the messiness of running a new business. It's also on-brand because it shows a real picture of the business owner.
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Alternatively, you could create a fun, but informative video or podcast to accompany your blog post.
This content will allow you to discuss a viral marketing trend in depth, or interview an industry expert. Although this may not entertain people outside your industry, it can make your blog more interesting.
Fun facts: 27.9% of our survey respondents say that advice or insight from experts and/or thought leaders in their field is an element that is most likely to motivate them to read blog content.
3. People read blogs to know about trends related to their job industry.
It's hard to succeed in an industry without knowing how it works. That's why social media marketers need the latest social media marketing trends. The same goes for content marketers, salespeople, customer service specialists, and others.
These trends can attract your blog readers, and you can benefit by including an offer. For example, our sales trends post contains a link to our detailed 2023 sales trends report.
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After reading this report, a seller who wants to go deeper may decide to download our report. This is a win because now we can build a relationship with this customer by sending more valuable content.
Trends also include new products or platforms. For example, our industry has recently started discussing social media platforms like threads. As we watched threads grow, we knew we needed to create content that would help users navigate this new app.
Check out the first post we made about threads:
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In addition to explaining what Threads is and why the app is going viral, we also created more posts about this new platform.
By responding to threads like trends and news, we establish our blog as the go-to place for the latest industry insights about marketing, sales, customer service and general tips.
Doing this will help you win blog readers and increase sales in the future.
Now that you know why people read blogs, it is worth knowing why a reader may not be interested in a blog post.
3 reasons why consumers stop reading blog posts
Dealing with these reasons will help you understand how to attract readers to your blog. During our survey, we asked respondents to share the top three reasons they would stop reading blog posts.
Here's what he said.
1. The blog post is poorly written or difficult to follow editorially.
33.2% of our respondents chose this option. He is one of three readers. To avoid this situation, you have to be careful of elements of a poorly written post.
This also includes:
- Vague introduction. If your blog post intro doesn't sound like a great pickup line, skip it. Such introductions are likely vague, and they will motivate your reader to move on.
- No clarity. These posts often contain jargon that the intended audience may not understand. They also lack clear language and often contain grammatical errors and typos.
- Weak content idea. If the idea of an article is surface level, the article will not delve deeper into the essence. So before you put it down to paper, consider the quality of your content idea.
- Babble off topic. Going off topic is a no-no. Never deviate. Presenting irrelevant information will only confuse readers and make it difficult to follow your content.
2. Blog posts take too long to deliver on the promise made in their title or description.
33.2% of our respondents say blogs fail at this task. Simple solution: Get to the point fast.
At HubSpot, we typically require a two to three paragraph introduction from our team, especially when the topic is obvious to the reader.
This ensures that we don't waste our readers' time and helps us get the gist of our blog posts quickly.
3. The blog post is too long or text-heavy.
31.5% of our respondents abandoned reading blog posts for this reason. To fix this, you can include bullet points, infographics, videos, memes, and images in your long-form posts. It breaks down walls of text and improves the readability of the content.
As a general rule, you can include these content elements for every 300 words of text you write.
Creating content that meets readers' needs in 2023
Your audience has many motivations for reading your blog posts. Some want entertainment, others want to learn, and others want industry or career-specific information.
To win them all, you have to create a combination of these types of ingredients. Creating this content also makes it easy to include your product if it is related to what you are discussing.
For example, when we're discussing a strategy that HubSpot can help with, we can subtly link readers to a tool or resource we provide that can help them.
Here's an example of a HubSpot mention in a post about form-building tools:
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We also like to include free offers related to our content at the end of each blog post. When we do this, the reader can learn more about the topic he has read.
And, when they fill out a simple form requesting a free resource, they can choose whether they would like to be contacted about one of our products.
This makes the reader feel as if they are receiving valuable information without being forced to learn about our products.
Readers are also hungry for interactive content. This makes your posts fun to read and easy to understand. For example, you might consider embedding a trivia or personality quiz related to your industry, as we did in this blog post:
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After answering each question, readers get answers in real time, and this can further help in the learning process.
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Building an Effective 2023 Blog Strategy
While it's great to run with a successful content type, the blogs with the most credibility often have a mix of content that entertains or informs readers, makes them aware of brands or products, or engages them. Teaches something new.
And with consumers in our surveys saying they read blogs for a variety of reasons, there's a good chance that a mix will be interesting and meet your audience's reading needs.
Editor's note: This blog post was originally published in May 2020 but was recently updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.
