Blogging is now both a publishing habit and a community channel. In the HubSpot 2025 State of Blogging Report, 65% of marketers work for companies that maintain blogs. The same report shows that customer engagement is a leading purpose, while Orbit Media’s 2025 Blogging Statistics points to search visibility and reader engagement as continuing challenges. Together, these figures describe a blog community shaped by consistent publishing, social distribution, useful formats, evidence, and increasingly common AI assistance.
Contents
- How common and important blogging is
- Publishing frequency, formats, and results
- How blogs build and measure community
- Distribution, traffic, and audience challenges
- AI adoption and editorial production
- Trust, experience, and evidence
- Where blogging is heading
How common and important blogging is
Blogging is a mainstream activity among the businesses represented in the HubSpot 2025 State of Blogging Report. Sixty-five percent of marketers are employed by companies that maintain blogs. That makes the blog less of an isolated editorial project and more of a recurring part of marketing and audience communication.
The reported attitude toward blogging is also strongly positive. Forty-seven percent of marketers at blog-maintaining businesses say blogging is very important, and another 46% say it is important. Five percent describe its importance as neutral, while 2% say it is less important. These figures indicate that 93% place blogging in one of the two positive importance categories.
Investment patterns show that blogging competes for a meaningful share of marketing resources. Among blog-producing businesses, 24% dedicate less than 10% of their marketing budget to blogging. Thirty-one percent dedicate 11–20%, 25% dedicate 21–30%, and 18% dedicate more than 30%.
The reported return trend is similarly encouraging, although it is not universal. Fifty percent of marketers saw higher blogging ROI in 2024 than in 2023, while 31% saw roughly the same ROI. Fifteen percent saw lower ROI. Looking ahead from the report’s measurement period, 45% expected to invest more budget in blogging in 2025 than in 2024, 40% expected investment to remain flat, and 13% expected to invest less.
Publishing frequency, formats, and results
The HubSpot report records several different publishing rhythms rather than one dominant schedule. Twenty-two percent of blog-maintaining businesses publish daily. Thirty-seven percent publish two to three times per week, and 30% publish weekly. Smaller shares publish bi-weekly or monthly: 7% and 5%, respectively.
Orbit Media’s 2025 Blogging Statistics gives a different view of cadence: about half of marketers publish two to four times per month. It also reports that 37% of bloggers publishing multiple times per week report strong results. The two sources use different survey descriptions and measures, so their figures are best read as complementary snapshots rather than a single combined benchmark.
The content formats most widely used by bloggers are practical and structured. Orbit Media reports that 76% publish how-to articles, 54% publish list posts, and 53% publish guides and ebooks. In the HubSpot report, 51% say how-to guides perform well, followed by industry news at 45%, case studies at 42%, encyclopedic articles at 34%, and product listicles at 23%.
Content programs also vary in how they balance lasting and time-sensitive material. Forty percent of businesses in HubSpot’s data publish evergreen and timely content at a 50/50 split. Twenty-four percent use a 75% evergreen and 25% timely mix, while 18% use the reverse. Seven percent publish evergreen content exclusively, and 2% publish timely content exclusively.
Orbit Media reports that the average article length in 2025 is 1,333 words, while the average time spent creating an article is 3 hours 25 minutes. Among bloggers producing articles of 2,000 words or more, 39% report strong results. Length alone does not establish performance, but these figures show the production commitment associated with more substantial articles.
| Blogging measure | Reported figure | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Average article length | 1,333 words | Orbit Media, 2025 |
| Average creation time | 3 hours 25 minutes | Orbit Media, 2025 |
| Blog businesses publishing daily | 22% | HubSpot 2025 State of Blogging Report |
| Bloggers publishing multiple times weekly who report strong results | 37% | Orbit Media, 2025 |
| Bloggers with 2,000+ word articles who report strong results | 39% | Orbit Media, 2025 |
How blogs build and measure community
The HubSpot data identifies community-facing goals alongside traditional marketing goals. Sixty-six percent of businesses blog for brand awareness, 53% blog for customer engagement, and 49% blog for lead generation. SEO-related purposes account for 34%, while 26% blog to project thought leadership.
Customer engagement therefore ranks just below brand awareness among the reported objectives. For an online community, that distinction matters: a blog can be used to introduce a brand, but it can also give existing readers reasons to return, share, respond, and recognize a shared set of interests.
The measures businesses use reflect both reach and interaction. Fifty-four percent use pageviews to measure blog success, and 53% use social shares. Conversion rate is used by 46%, time on page by 45%, and backlinks by 22%.
Orbit Media reports that 60% of surveyed bloggers say blogs deliver some results and 21% report strong results. It also records community-related friction: 56% say getting readers to engage is a challenge in 2025. This combination suggests that producing content and building an active readership are separate tasks. A blog may attract visits without creating the level of participation its publisher wants.
Content elements associated with participation and credibility are widely used. Orbit Media reports that 60% of marketers include statistics in blog content, 45% include contributor quotes, 26% include video, and 7% include audio. Among those using these elements, 24% of bloggers who include statistics report strong results, compared with 25% for contributor quotes, 28% for video, and 30% for audio.
Distribution, traffic, and audience challenges
Social media is the leading distribution route in the HubSpot 2025 State of Blogging Report: 83% of businesses distribute blog content through social media. Email newsletters and paid ads are each used by 47%. Organic search is used by 36%, influencers by 33%, and paid search by 23%.
Orbit Media reports an even higher social-sharing rate: 93% of marketers share content on social media. Since the surveys use different populations and wording, the figures should not be treated as a precise trend line. They do, however, agree that social distribution is a central part of blog promotion.
Businesses differ in the traffic mix they rely on. Thirty-eight percent of blog businesses source traffic mostly organically, 21% source it primarily through paid avenues, and 36% use a mostly equal mix of organic and paid traffic. Orbit Media reports that attracting visitors from search is a challenge for 63% of marketers in 2025.
Influencer collaboration is not yet routine for every content program. Orbit Media reports that 45% of content marketers never collaborate with influencers, 46% do so sometimes, and 9% usually or always collaborate with them. Among marketers who pay to make content more visible, 30% report strong results.
Visual use is common, but intensity varies. Orbit Media reports that 30% of bloggers use one visual per post, 51% use two or three, 15% use four to six, and 4% use seven or more. The share reporting strong results rises across those groups: 16% with one visual, 19% with two or three, 31% with four to six, and 50% with seven or more. These are reported associations, not proof that adding visuals alone causes stronger performance.
AI adoption and editorial production
AI assistance is widespread among bloggers. In the HubSpot 2025 State of Blogging Report, only 4% of bloggers never use AI tools for content creation. Twenty-one percent use AI for less than 25% of content creation, 37% use it for 25–50%, 19% use it for 51–75%, and 16% use it for more than 75%.
The most common uses are supporting editorial tasks. Forty-three percent use AI for editing and proofreading, 38% for outline creation, 37% for first-draft writing, 31% for image creation, 30% for topic research, and 26% for meta-description generation. Orbit Media reports that 10% of marketers use AI to write complete articles.
Among named tools in the HubSpot report, 68% use ChatGPT for content creation and 50% use Google Gemini. Copy.ai is used by 13%, Claude by 12%, Jasper by 11%, HubGPT by 8%, and other AI resources by 5%.
Orbit Media reports that the share of marketers who do not use AI fell from 65% to 5% over 24 months. The reported production changes after adding AI tools were positive for most respondents: 19% saw production increase significantly and 48% saw it increase moderately. Seventeen percent saw no change, while 9% saw a moderate decrease and 3% a significant decrease.
Trust, experience, and evidence
Blog community statistics also show how publishers try to make content credible. In HubSpot’s data, 43% establish author expertise by referencing published works and citations, 42% use author bios with credentials, and 40% include links to professional profiles. Twenty-seven percent reference industry certifications, while 8% are unsure how they establish author expertise.
Firsthand experience is documented in several ways. Forty-five percent highlight personal experiences from team members, 36% source original quotes from subject matter experts, 35% reference case studies from actual clients, 33% feature expert interviews, and 25% share product testing results. Ten percent do not specifically document experience, and 6% are unsure about how they document it.
Data appears in a substantial share of blog content. Twenty-eight percent of respondents feature data in 41–60% of their content, 26% feature it in 61–80%, and 13% in 81–100%. Smaller shares feature data in 0–20% or 21–40% of content: 8% and 23%, respectively. Three percent are unsure how much data they feature.
The report also records changes made in response to E-E-A-T expectations. Thirty-nine percent increased their citation of primary sources, 36% added original research and data, 34% implemented expert review processes, and 31% enhanced fact-checking procedures. Twenty percent added author credentials and bios. Twelve percent made no significant E-E-A-T changes, and 7% were unsure how they adapted.
Where blogging is heading
The HubSpot 2025 State of Blogging Report presents a generally expansionary outlook. Fifty-six percent see blogging’s role expanding in the future, 32% expect it to stay the same, 7% expect it to shrink, and 5% are unsure.
Blogging is also being connected to other formats. Eighty-one percent of blog-producing businesses are investing in video, 53% in podcasts, 46% in newsletters, 39% in webinars, and 20% in ebooks. This points to a broader publishing system in which a blog can act as a written home base for multiple community touchpoints.
Orbit Media’s results add a useful performance perspective. Forty-nine percent of content programs publish original research, and 25% of those publishing original research report strong results. Among marketers using AI as an editor, 21% report strong results, while 24% of marketers using more than one human editor report strong results.
Taken together, the figures describe a blog community built through regular publishing and repeated distribution, but sustained by usefulness and trust. How-to content, evidence, contributor perspectives, social sharing, and visible expertise all appear in the reported practices. The main audience challenge remains clear: attracting readers is not the same as getting them to engage.