How did blogging gain attention? How do bloggers promote their blog? Are they active on social media channels? Do they really understand and implement the SEO tactics to attract traffic? When you think of blogging, we do have these questions in our heads!
And so, we got in touch with a the blogging community and interacted with bloggers to get these answers!
A perfect place to voice yourself aloud to the world, to share your passion, thoughts, ideas, anything and everything that you want to be certainly is where the blog comes into the picture. Be it your personal promotion or your business or any specific cause, you will be able to reach out to thousands of readers once you own a blog site.
The Blogging Scenario in India
Blogging is the latest trend in India with 6.7 million people blogging on blogging sites and 12 million blogging via social media sites, of which majority are women. The future of blogging is vivid with 77% of Internet users reading blogs. Studies state that 26% of the blog traffic from the blogging audience is via mobiles and tablets.
Objective of the Survey:
- To understand the pattern of blogging of the top-most bloggers.
- To explore how bloggers exploit social media platforms for their personal and professional promotion.
- To know if bloggers understand the basics of SEO.
- To understand how brands employ bloggers as influencers to market their products or services.
The Survey Methodology:
Our comprehensive survey was targeted on the top bloggers from Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. To mention, our database was privileged to enroll some of the popular international bloggers also. We then ended up on a sample size of 350 active bloggers. We also found that bloggers responded more quickly when contacted through social media sites!
All the 350 survey takers of our exploratory research were not just a random pick, but the top and potential bloggers across the major cities of South India. We approached a plethora of bloggers who ink on different genres like travel, food, technology, beauty, fashion, photography, lifestyle, health, literature as well as personal life. Our results on gender analysis clearly outcast the trend, where 54% of the respondents are women and 46% are men.The mandatory aspect that we looked into each of the blogger profiles was their recency, frequency and the quality of the content.
The Blogging Trend:
Blogging for your business in itself has become an industry over the last three years and roughly there are 512 million blogs in the world. The humane aspect of blogs that it can be of any type from personal to professional draws more attention.
Social media in human lives is no longer a topic of debate and it applies to bloggers as well. When people are looking for you online, your social presence matters the most to them with an updated and engaging content, as Social media has become the new SEO!
Experts say that when you own a profile in Twitter, you can always impact how well your blog page looks in the regular web search. It has become very common that when something occurs on Facebook or Twitter, we swoop into them first and then revert with the information to our search engines.
Inklings from the Survey:
The Blogging Pattern of the Respondents:
- The landscape of blogging platforms has changed dramatically over the years with new entrants every minute and technologies that assist people with new ways of writing. 63% of bloggers use WordPress of which 80% of bloggers know to install WordPress theme on their own.
- A killer blog page is everyone’s dream! If content is the king, the queen is definitely the ‘Frequency’. It is good to know that 50% of the bloggers post weekly irrespective of the experience, of which still 20% of them are the ‘when I am inspired to’, ‘when I feel like’ and ‘when I find time’ types.
- 37% of the bloggers say that their content falls between 400-600 words, waving good quality. And 30% of bloggers really do write more than 600 words, which is far more appealing.
Suggestions:
- If you wish to get indexed frequently by the almighty Google, you must publish posts frequently. Bloggers need to note that being consistent and regular with your blog posts is as important as your content.
- Decide on your blogging frequency based on the profile of your target audience and your goals.
- To have a successful blog, the ideal word count is 600-1200. If you are not comfortable posting one long blog post, better create a series of blog posts.
Social Media Usage Behavior of Indian Bloggers:
- 100% respondents were almost active on all key social media channels and 98% of the bloggers confirm that they promote their blog posts through Facebook and only 33% use LinkedIn for blog promotion.
- Surprisingly, just 35% of the bloggers post on Pinterest. Bloggers need to understand that Pinterest is a great tool to attract the right audience through interesting images and also pinning an image that leads to the blog post is good for SEO.
- 96% of the blogs that we came across had social media sharing buttons featured.
Suggestions:
- Clearly, approaching bloggers is a great way to spread word of mouth through their social media channels.
- We suggest bloggers to make use of LinkedIn as well, as LinkedIn has many relevant groups to their topic, which can help them drive relevant traffic to their blog posts. It will also help bloggers who are professionally blogging on a certain niche to build their professional brand in large.
- Bloggers must tweet the links more than once with different excerpts in different time zones.
Blogger’s Understanding of SEO:
- 75% of our survey takers really do understand and implement the SEO basics in their blog, which include both men and women.
- As said earlier, we have sneaked into the profiles of only TOP bloggers and our results even more validate this aspect. About 74% of them have said that they frequently analyze their blog traffic, which is really one of the satisfying findings.
- As bloggers promote their blog posts on social media channels, 78% opine that Facebook seems to bring them the maximum traffic.
Suggestions:
- Driving more traffic to one’s blog is what every blogger aspires for! With that said, analyzing the traffic sources for your blog is an important aspect of blogging. Tracking your traffic gives a wider look at the profile of your target audience and helps you in enhancing your goals further, if needed.
- Content is still (always!) the SEO king! As a blogger, one should understand that creating a blog that will rank high in search engines is where the essence of success resides.
- Keyword rich content and instant-clear headlines are the key aspects that a blogger should work on, so as to gain visibility and stay ahead.
- Bloggers should definitely present their content to search engines (On page) & other websites (Off-page) to boost traffic.
Blogger’s Behavior Towards Brand Endorsements:
- Our statistics reveal that digital space is gaining prominence by word of mouth recommendations, as 74% bloggers say that they are into brand endorsements and they recommend them on their social platforms and/or blogs.
- 64% of the bloggers are active participants in bloggers meet up, out of which 71% turn out to be female bloggers.
- 73% of the bloggers admit that they share their experience with brands on their blogs.
Suggestions:
- Studies constantly prove that 80% of customers read blogs and trust what bloggers say about a product or service before making any decision. Hence, brands are suggested to focus more on influencer marketing as bloggers and blogs have become the most influential resources of the marketing space.
- Bloggers should realize that running a website or exceptional writing on any topic alone wouldn’t claim anyone to be adroit in that field. Creating an “offline” relation and showcasing one’s portfolio to a wider audience of similar interest can help them get a stupendous spotlight.
- It is a great opportunity for Marketers to invest in Blogger’s relationship as bloggers are no less than digital influencers and their word of mouth matters to brands.
Other Useful Insights:
- Our blogger database didn’t fail to have a good proportion of bloggers. From fresh bloggers to veterans, we managed to grab all of them. Out of which, 29% were fresh bloggers who had begun blogging just a year back and only 11% of them were experienced with more than 8 years of blogging and the rest 60% were bloggers since 3 to 6 years.
- Bloggers report that out of all social networking 78% of their blog traffic is sourced from Facebook. Just 140 characters bring in the next highest traffic with tweeples as followers. LinkedIn still lags behind all the social media channels with respect to blogger usage. Also, it is found that bloggers aren’t aware of the wide-spread opportunities that LinkedIn renders in terms of exposure. It’s high time that bloggers need to explore those untapped opportunities.
- 68% of the bloggers report that they actively post feedbacks in websites like Zomato, Trip advisor, Burrp, IMDB and Mouthshut.
Indication for Marketers:
- Active bloggers in India are pretty serious about their blogging activities. It is a great opportunity for marketers to engage them and interact with them as almost 85% of the bloggers have endorsed brands on their blog.
- Bloggers in the digital space with a strong presence are also known for their digital influence, as the one who blogs also actively uses Social Media to promote their blog posts. This in nutshell is a great opportunity for marketers to create an influencer marketing campaign through them.
- Since 68% of the bloggers also writes review on the review sites such as Zomato, Tripadvisor, Burrp, IMDB, Mouthshut and more – This is like a double advantage that marketers are more likely to get if they belong to the relevant domain.
- Marketers should invest in blogger relationship and blogger meetup for the brands they manage. However, it is suggested to only invite relevant bloggers to their niche. Here is a case study of How we organized a blogger’s meetup for Urban Tree Infrastructures and here are few important tips that you can follow while organizing a blogger’s meetup.
I would love to know your thoughts on this survey report! Please share your thoughts on the comment section below.
Note: Sample Size might be too less for the clear conclusions.
