Survey indicates slow decline in personal blogs as bloggers become more client-focused

The survey of more than 1,000 bloggers seems to indicate a slow decline in personal blogs. Instead, bloggers are now more client-focused and some are now spending longer – up to six hours – writing one post which is generally longer (c. 1,500 words) and more comprehensive.

“A very small percentage of posts are responsible for an overwhelming portion of total traffic,” says Jay Baer of Convince and Convert. “Bloggers – perhaps intuitively, perhaps through testing – are beginning to understand this. The consequence is that each post needs to be bigger, better, more comprehensive to give it a chance to become a “hit.” That takes time.”

However, 48% spend 2 hours or less per post, down from 54% last year and the time spent writing a typical blog post has increased 8% to more than 2.5 hours per post.

While there has been a slight YoY rise in the numbers of bloggers who publish daily or more (from 4.7% in 2014 to 6.2% this year), those bloggers spend a lot less time writing, averaging one and half hours, an hour less than the typical blogger.

More than half of those bloggers surveyed said they write for clients, or do so at least some of the time. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds (64%) write more than one blog. Guest blogging was found to be becoming increasingly popular.

For more insights into the habits of successful bloggers, check out Andy Crestodina’s blog post on the Orbit Media Studios blog.