This is a list of up-to-date content marketing statistics.
On this page we’ve compiled statistics on:
- Blogging
- Video content
- Social media marketing
- Podcasting
- Emerging trends
- Lots more
Let’s get right into the stats!
104 Content Marketing Stats Every Marketer Needs to Know
Written by Brian Dean
01. Blogging Statistics
Despite the rise of video and social media, blogging and SEO are the two foundations of any content strategy in 2023. And there’s data to back this up. As you’re about to see, pro marketers put the lion’s share of their time and budget into creating content designed to rank in Google. The question is: how well does blogging work in 2023? Let’s find out.
- Websites that have a blog attract 55% more traffic (Quick Sprout)
- Blog titles containing 6-13 words generate the most traffic (HubSpot)
- The average blog post contains 1269 words (Orbit Media)
- Marketers who put an emphasis on blogging are 13x more likely to see a positive ROI from their efforts (HubSpot)
- A little over 15% of marketers use blogs as the primary output within their content strategy, second to video (18%) (HubSpot)
- 77% of people on the internet read blogs (D. John Carlson)
- Over 4.4 million blog posts are published daily (Tech Jury)
- Websites with active blogs generate 97% more backlinks (Business 2 Community)
- It takes writers an average of 3 hours and 55 minutes to write a blog post (Orbit Media)
- 36% of readers prefer articles with numbers in the headline (Conversion XL)
- Half of bloggers who produce long-form content report seeing strong content marketing results (Orbit Media)
- Bloggers who spend at least 6 hours creating each post report “strong” content marketing results 31% of the time, compared to 23.5% in the 2-4 hour range (Orbit Media)
- Blog posts containing a relevant image receive an average of 94% more views than posts without an image (MDG)
- 90% of bloggers include at least one image in their posts. Within this group, those using more images were more likely to report strong results (Orbit Media)
- The number of US bloggers is estimated at 31.7 million (Statista)
02. Video Content Marketing Statistics
Online video is exploding right now. As you’re about to see, most of this growth is on YouTube. But other platforms (like Facebook and Instagram) are catching up fast.
- Webinars, demos, and video on social are the 3 most popular types of video content that businesses are producing (Vidyard)
- 87% of marketers say video marketing has helped them increase website traffic (Wyzowl)
- 70% of YouTube’s total watchtime is on mobile (YouTube)
- Marketers report that their website (85%), social media (84%), and YouTube (67%) are the top 3 channels to distribute video content (Vidyard)
- 55% of internet users watch videos online every day (HighQ)
- The rate at which videos are shared on social is 12x higher than image and text content combined (Small Business Trends)
- Social video posts see a 48% boost in views (HubSpot)
- Using video helps marketers grow business revenue 49% faster than marketers not using video (Vidyard)
- 40% of companies state that video is their highest ROI form of content (Animoto)
- 86% of consumers say they would like more video content from the brands they support (Wyzowl)
- Brands have an average of 377 videos published in their library (Vidyard)
- 66% of consumers said that a short video was their favorite medium to learn about a product or service (Wyzowl)
- The average retention rate for videos under 90 seconds long is 53% (Neil Patel)
- 1 billion hours of video are consumed by YouTube users each day (YouTube)
- The top 3 platforms marketers use to post organic videos and video ads are YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram (Animoto)
- Almost 20% of marketers name video as the primary medium within their content strategy, ranking first ahead of blogs and infographics (HubSpot)
03. Podcast Statistics
Now it’s time to cover content marketing statistics that are focused on podcasts. What’s interesting about podcasts is how quickly they went from a niche form of content to a mainstream medium. These podcasting statistics show just how big this platform is… and how it was the potential to grow even more.
- 55% of Americans listen to podcasts (Statista)
- 49% of podcast listens happen at home versus 22% in the car (Podcast Insights)
- 51% of US podcast listeners are men. That’s in line with the population split (Edison Research)
- There are over 1.5 million active podcasts (Podcast Insights)
- Smartphones are the main medium by which podcast content is consumed (Edison Research)
- 54% of U.S. podcast consumers listen through Apple’s iOS ecosystem (Music Oomph)
- 26% of podcast listeners ages 12+ speed up the playback speed in 2019, up from 19% in 2018 (Edison Research)
- Podcasts now account for 28% of total time consumers spend listening to audio, which places it ahead of any other audio source (Edison Research)
- 80% of podcast listeners listen through most or all of podcast episodes (Podcast Insights)
- 94% of people who listen to podcasts are active on every social media channel compared to 81% of the entire population (Podcast Insights)
- The most popular genre of podcasts is Comedy, followed by News and Education (Podcast Insights)
- Podcasts receive roughly 104 million listeners each month (Edison Research)
- Weekly podcast listeners average 6 episodes per week (Edison Research)
- In 2019, 17% of marketers anticipate adding podcasting to their content marketing strategy (HubSpot)
- 50% of all homes in the U.S. are fans of at least one podcast (Nielsen)
- People spend 2.5 hours daily on social media and social messaging (GlobalWebIndex)
- Facebook is still the top social media platform used by marketers, followed by Instagram and Twitter (HubSpot)
- The top goal companies want to achieve from their social media strategy is building brand awareness (HooteSuite)
- Facebook users can recall a piece of content after being exposed to it for only 0.25 seconds (Facebook)
- A study conducted by Rival IQ found that the median engagement rate on Instagram is 1.22%, compared to only 0.09% on Facebook and 0.048% on Twitter (Rival IQ)
- The same Rival IQ study found that the average number of posts each day is 0.83 on Facebook, 0.62 on Instagram, and 0.77 on Twitter (Rival IQ)
- The best time to post on Facebook is Wednesdays at 11am or 1pm (Sprout Social)
- The best times to post on Instagram are Wednesdays at 11am or Fridays between 10am and 11am (Sprout Social)
- The best times to post on Twitter are Wednesdays and Fridays at 9am (Sprout Social)
- The best times to post on LinkedIn are Wednesdays between 9am and 10am or 12pm (Sprout Social)
- For the first time in 2020, image posts overtook permanent video posts for average number of interactions (Mention)
- As of July 2020, here are the number of global active users by each of the major social channels: Facebook (2.603 billion), Instagram (1.082 billion), TikTok (800 million), SnapChat (397 million), Twitter (326 million), LinkedIn (303 million) (Statista)
- 91% of executives name LinkedIn as the top choice for content that is professionally relevant (Sprout Social)
- 61% of marketers focus their social media content around teaching, 58% focus on storytelling, and 53% create posts that inspire (Sprout Social)
- 58% of consumers prefer visual types of content on social media (Sprout Social)
- A study conducted by Backlinko and Buzzsumo that analyzed 912 million blog posts found that headlines containing 14-17 words produce 76.7% more shares on social compared to short headlines (Backlinko)
- Content containing 1,000-2,000 words fetch an average of 56.1% more shares on social compared to content with fewer than 1,000 words (Backlinko)
- 1.3% of all articles published online receive 75% of all social shares (Backlinko)
- Headlines in the form of a question tend to receive 23.3% more social shares than other types of headlines (Backlinko)
- List posts garner an average of 218% more social shares than “how to” posts and 203% more than infographics (Backlinko)
- List posts containing 10 items have 4x as many shares on social as compared to the second most popular list number, which is 23 (OkDork)
05. B2B Content Marketing Statistics
If you’re in B2B, you already know that you need to approach content marketing differently than in B2C. And I’m not talking about pushing out tons of white papers. It’s 2023 after all!
That’s not to say that content marketing in B2B is any less effective than it used to be. You just need to create content for people that are going to consume that content (and possibly convert) at work. This list of content marketing stats focused on the B2B world gives some insight into how this plays out in the real world.
- Blog posts are statistically the most effective tool for building brand awareness, with 31% of B2B companies listing short articles as the highest-performing content in this respect (Content Marketing Institute)
- 75% of B2B marketers are likelier to use blogging as part of their social media content, as compared to 61% of B2C marketers (Social Media Examiner)
- B2B companies who blog consistently receive 67% more monthly leads than companies who don’t blog regularly (Demand Metric)
- CMI reports that 85% of B2B companies send out an email marketing newsletter as part of their content marketing plan (Content Marketing Institute)
- Email engagement is the most-used metric for assessing content performance within B2B businesses, with 90% of companies tracking things like open and click-throughs (Content Marketing Institute)
- SiriusDecisions found that 60-70% of the content that B2B marketers create goes unused (Sirius Decisions)
- 46% of B2B marketers expect their content budget to be increased this year (Content Marketing Institute)
- 93% of content on B2B sites get zero links from other sites (Backlinko)
- Only 3% of content on B2B sites receive links from multiple websites (Backlinko)
- 2% of articles created by B2B brands result in 75% of social shares of all B2B content (Backlinko)
- Only 42% of B2B content marketers say they’ve spoken with customers as part of their audience research (Content Marketing Institute)
- 47% of B2B buyers consumed 3-5 pieces of content from a company before engaging with one of their sales reps (Demand Gen Report)
- 66% of B2B marketers are distributing content through paid channels (Search Engine Watch)
06. B2C Content Marketing Statistics
Now it’s time to cover a handful of B2C content marketing statistics. So if you’re in fitness, health, fashion, or other B2C industries, you’ll probably be super interesting in these stats.
- 55% of B2C marketers outsource at least part of their content creation (Content Marketing Institute)
- B2C content produces 9.7x more shares than content on B2B sites (Backlinko)
- The most successful B2C marketing teams spend 26% of their marketing budget towards content marketing (Content Marketing Institute)
- 51% of B2C content marketers measure the ROI from their content marketing efforts, while 78% use at least one form of metrics (Content Marketing Institute)
- The top 3 types of tools that B2C marketers use to manage their content marketing system: social media publishing/analytics (84%), analytics tools (83%), and email marketing software (72%) (Content Marketing Institute)
- In 2020, 85% of B2C marketers said they have used paid methods to distribute their content during the last 12 months. That jumped from 68% in the previous year (Content Marketing Institute)
- In 2019, 56% of B2C marketers have increased their spending on content creation over the last 12 months (Content Marketing Institute)
- The top 3 tactics that B2C marketers use as part of their content marketing strategy: social media content (94%), blogging (80%), and email newsletters (74%) (Content Marketing Institute)
07. Content Marketing Benchmarks & Trends
Let’s wrap things up with a slew of interesting stats that show how content fits into the digital marketing landscape. And where it may beheading.
- According to a QuickSprout case study, email subscribers are nearly 4x more likely to share your content on social media (QuickSprout)
- An overwhelming majority (94%) of blog posts earn zero external links (Backlinko)
- The top goal companies have for their content marketing efforts is brand awareness (Content Marketing Institute)
- Approximately 54% of marketers across B2B and B2C companies combined expect their marketing budget to increase next year (Content Marketing Institute)
- 55% of business professionals claim that great storytelling is what helps them focus on and engage with content (Prezi)
- Nearly 3/4s of bloggers that make at least $50k/year state that they create content for a niche audience (Growth Badger)
- More than 1 in 4 marketers rank images as the form of content most important for engagement (HubSpot)
- 43% of digital consumers say they skim through content, with blogs being the top content medium that gets skimmed (HubSpot)
- Content marketing is 3x more cost effective at lead generation than paid search (Content Marketing Institute)
- 60% of marketers repurpose their content two to five times (Contently)
- The top 2 content marketing activities that are outsourced the most are writing (44%) and design (41%) (LinkedIn)
- 51% of companies that are actively doing content marketing are creating content daily (The Manifest)
- Marketers believe that the top 2 ways to improve content are by creating more original content or making more visual content (The Manifest)
- 51% of content consumed on the internet is driven by organic Google search (Kuno Creative)
- Stock photography and original graphics (like infographics) are the top 2 types of visual content that brands use most frequently (Venngage)
- Marketers spend an average of 2-5 hours each week working on visual content (Venngage)
Conclusion
I hope you learned something new from my list of content marketing statistics.
Now I’d like to hear what you have to say:
Is there a stat about content that’s missing from this list?
Go ahead and leave a comment and let me know.
04. Social Media Marketing Statistics
Social media and content marketing go hand in hand. First of all, a lot of the content that people produce is specifically for social media platforms, like Facebook and YouTube. Also, social media is an important distribution channel for content that people publish on their own websites. Now it’s time to see what the data says about how social media marketing impacts content marketing.