What the Top 10 Blogs in Content Marketing Are Doing That You Probably Aren’t

by Andrew Hanelly on March 15, 2011

what the best content marketing blogs do that you probably don't

If you want to have one of the most-read blogs in all of content marketing, the formula is actually pretty simple.

All you have to do? Write 2.4 posts per day with an average word count of 1,278 every day for the next 6.7 years.

Think you have the stamina? 

If you break down the output of the top 10 blogs on AdAge’s Power 150, you’ll find that the average blog has been producing content for nearly 2,500 days. Their average post is 1,278 words, and on average, they publish about 2.4 posts per day.

Sure, there’s more to it than that, but looking at these blogs from a purely block and tackle level, you quickly realize that if you want to be influential, you’ve got to work pretty damn hard.

Do As I Do, Not as I Say

The top 10 blogs in content marketing have taught us a lot over the years. They’ve given us tips, told us how to improve our sites, and analyzed all the important things we need to be aware of as content marketers. And we’ve listened.

But are we focusing too much on what they say and not enough on what they do?

For instance:

Readers have short attention spans. (The top blogs don’t care.)

The conventional wisdom is to keep your blog posts at about the length of a mini-skirt: long enough to cover a topic, but short enough to keep someone’s attention. And for the most part, we all agree. But if you look at the average word count of posts in the top 10 you’ll see that their most popular posts average a word count of almost 1,300.

Readers don’t like to get inundated, so only post when you have something truly remarkable to say. (The top blogs reject that thinking.)

We worry a lot about overwhelming our audiences. If they hear from us too much, we’ll start to come off as annoying and people will tune is out. But the truth lies on the contrary: the top blogs post an average of once every ten hours. If you’re posting once every ten days, which is considered the “minimum” to stay relevant, you’re at about 1/24th of the output level you should be at ideally.

This kind of productivity also helps to build the top blogs’ presence in Google results page, as they average 10,142 pages in Google’s index.

Fish where the fish are. Don’t bother with a company blog when you can build just as much traction on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media outlets. (The top blogs scoff at this notion.)

Nine out of 10 of the top blogs in content marketing have one thing in common: a big promotion in the upper right-hand corner of their site, above the fold, asking for readers to sign up for their email newsletter. Email. Sure, their sites are also dotted with social media icons, but priority #1 is on getting someone to hand over their coveted contact information.

Think about it: our daily activity has oscillated a lot over the past 5 years when it comes to how active we are on any given social platform. But most of us have kept the same email address and checked our inbox every day in the same period of time. Lists build empires.

Success can happen quickly. If your initiative is taking too long to build traction, it’s because you’re doing it wrong and should consider rethinking your investment. (The top blogs are happy their potential competition gives up so easily.)

The average age of a top 10 content marketing blog is 6.7 years. They’ve been at it for a while. Success didn’t come over night, but they focused on the grindstone and built audience over time.

Every time a would-be competitor folds up shop and turns their community into a ghost town because it wasn’t growing fast enough, they give each other high-fives. Another one bites the dust, and they get back to work.

That open source stuff is only for small blogs without substantial audience. If you want to have a strong web presence, you need to invest heavily in your CMS. (The top blogs are laughing all the way to the bank.)

Six out of the top 10 blogs are on WordPress. They put less of a focus on their shell and more on the nut. They haven’t slowed themselves down by building their own platform; instead, they’ve used an open source platform and focused on getting work done. If it’s good enough to present their readers content, generate email subscriptions, and serve ads, it is good enough for these blogs.

And it should be good enough for you. The rest, it turns out, is just a distraction.

[So, how did I get these numbers?

This study is far from scientific, but it’s enough to see general trends.

Picking the list

I took a look at the top 10 blogs on AdAge’s Power 150 and listed them in a spreadsheet. I removed PSFK.com and Ads of the World because their model was patently different than a traditional content marketing blog.

The list includes:

Finding posts per day

I tallied up all the posts each of these blogs produced in the past year and got an average number of posts per day. SearchEngineLand.com drove up the average. Many of these blogs don’t post on weekends but will sometimes post twice in one day.

Pages in Google’s index

I did a simple search in Google for each of these blogs (e.g. “site:http://www.chrisbrogan.com”) and arrived at a number

Number of words per post

If the blog had a “most popular” list, I grabbed 10 posts from there and took a word count (my logic was that the popular posts really are the model to copy here, as they are the hardest-working posts on a site). For those that didn’t have such a list, I used SEOmoz.org’s Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/) and looked at the “Top Pages” list. From there, I only looked at pages that were blog posts or articles (not to be confused with whitepaper downloads, etc., which may have caused outliers).

Days active

I tracked down the first post of each of these sites and recorded the date. Then I did some simple math (impressive, right?)]

What do you think the top blogs are doing that the rest of us aren’t? And what did I do wrong in my analysis?

Andrew Hanelly

Written by: Andrew Hanelly

Andrew is VP of Digital Experience at TMG and for one semester in college, was a sociology major. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.

  • peter

    so, what you’re saying is we’re doing everything wrong. we’ve been scammed!!

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      I wouldn’t go that far, but I do think it’s important to not only listen to what people say, but also to watch what they do. I don’t think there are any bad intentions from any of these blogs (and in a lot of cases, they aren’t the ones spouting the “conventional wisdom” I stated).

  • http://engage.tmgcustommedia.com Chris Blose

    I always felt like the “keep it short” mantra for the web was a bit misleading. In a lot of cases, it’s good advice, but if a story or post is well-written and interesting, are you going to quit reading at 500 words?

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      I agree, Chris. If you are worried about people abandoning ship after a couple hundred words, you have more problems than just word count.

      • http://www.realaffiliateincome.net/ Ken

        I think a lot of people see a lower word count and generally think the information they seek is not likely to be found. Most people want answers to specific questions or opinions on specific topics. With lower word count, the perception is that there is less focused information. What are your thoughts?

        • http://www.mindsharenet.com Jeff Kryger

          I would agree with that Ken. Happened to me just earlier today, I went to a blog post and it was a short one and I didn’t even take the time to read what was there because I felt it was not going to be valuable

          • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

            Ken and Jeff – I agree with you guys, it’s sort of like “price tag thinking” where if something doesn’t cost enough, it can’t be that high of value. When I go to a post and see 150 words, I figure it can’t possibly be the authority on any question I’m asking, unless it’s something like a date in history in which case I’m in and out in a hurry – which means I’m not likely to be engaged with the site anyway.

            A notable exception to this is Seth Godin, who is able to give a tremendous amount of insight in a few sentences. That said, he’s not writing any tutorials, but his brief posts are definitely worth the read.

            Thanks for the comments, guys!

  • http://www.brainwads.com Drew Hawkins

    I knew that it took a lot of effort to build up traffic like that but holy cow. That’s a lot of blogging. I like posting my thoughts but only when I feel like I have something to say. I don’t like to post for the sake of posting.

    Nice research there man!

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      It sort of boggles the mind, doesn’t it? That would mean if you started a blog today, you could expect to be a top blog by late in 2017. You would have to write 5,869 blog posts; a total of 7.5 million words. Wow.

  • http://www.tablazines.com Tablazines

    It’s even more hectic if your blog focus on something like music. That 2.4 post sky rockets to about 10-12 a day.

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Churn and burn. I am not envious of anyone who has to do anything 10-12 times a day. Let alone writing posts.

  • CPortfleet

    Only 23% of social media users actually get engaged/share opinions. Can you imagine how many more blog posts there would be if everyone were to get involved.
    Do you think the number of posts per day will increase in the future? In February I listened to a webinar that suggested that avid users (those that use social media over 10 hours per week) have responded to surveys indicating they plan on using social media much more in 2011 than they did in 2010.

  • http://www.teamworkscom.com Paul Pruuneau

    Thank you for this great post and for outlining the actual investment required to reach a “top 10″ blog position. Well done!

    Not surprisingly, most people, especially if your running a business, will never step up to that kind of effort.

    However, I applaud your research and your effort and have shared your insights with others.
    Keep up the great work!

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      I appreciate you saying that, Paul. It does take an amazing amount of commitment, but the payoff seems to be great. I think, all too often, we ask ourselves, “what is the minimum I can do to get results?” when we should be focusing on “what is everything I can do to get results.” Thanks for the comment.

  • http://bulanetwork.com/blog Randy Cantrell

    Good work, Andrew. Sort of proves you can’t produce too much content – a question I’ve asked folks about recently. My personal philosophy and strategy is to produce as often as I can because I figure every now and then I’m bound to be brilliant! Even a blind hog finds a truffle every now and then.

    Randy

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Thanks for the comment, Randy. The blind hog analogy is pretty funny, but absolutely true. One of the other benefits of keeping at it and consistently producing content is you can learn what works and what doesn’t more quickly. Trying things out and experimenting can teach you a lot about what works and what doesn’t (I touch on this a bit here: http://engage.tmgcustommedia.com/2010/10/the-importance-of-a-content-marketing-playground/) I’d love to know what you think. Glad you stopped by!

  • http://area224.com Dave Van de Walle

    So…the message is to KEEP AT IT. Find your voice, stick with your voice, and KEEP AT IT.

    Very VERY awesome post. And thanks for the kick in the pants.

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Absolutely, Dave, and thanks for the comment. I think Thomas Edison sums it all up with this quote: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.” It’s ugly. It’s not fun. It’s not glamorous, but it works as long as you do.

  • http://fionastolze.com Fiona Stolze

    I thought this post was great and I totally agree that it’s important to really look at what successful people do and model our behaviour on that. At present I write around 3 posts a week and my readership is growing. I would love to post once a day at least to crank things up. The tip about collecting emails too is invaluable. I’m certainly going to do what they do and not what they say. Thanks for posting.

    Fiona Stolze
    Inspired Art and Living
    http://fionastolze.com

  • LC Roque

    I don’t know about these particular sites, but I know from following the job postings at guru.com and peopleperhour.com that there are A LOT of websites who hire out the job of writing posts at pennies per post – or even $.01 penny per post – rates. Kudos to Google for working to filter out the websites that churn content, and finding the legit sources.

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Those types of sites do exist, but as you pointed out, Google is combating most of the terrible ones by tweaking their algorithm. None of the sites I referenced do that though, for the record. They’re all written by actual experts who offer real value. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek when I say that all you need to do is produce that much content, because the difference-maker on all of the blogs listed here is that their stuff is very high quality, too. Thanks for the comment, LC.

  • http://www.atticusuncensored.com Heidi Alberti & Atticus Uncensored

    Great research Andrew! But, wow, that’s a lot of content!

    I’m a freelance writer and what I “sell” on my blog is my writing ability (part of body of work for interested editors, etc. to view), so the thought of throwing something out there just for the sake of content could do me harm. I try to carefully craft each piece, like a painter, and sometimes inspiration doesn’t happen in 2.4 posts per day! Your thoughts??

    Heidi (& Atticus)
    http://www.atticusuncensored.com
    “commentary to give you paws…”

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Hey Heidi (& Atticus), thanks for the comment. One of the takeaways that I was going to include was that most of these blogs are team blogs – meaning, a team of writers contribute. They keep their standards of quality very high by having a few people churn out content (the notable exceptions being Chris Brogan and Brian Solis, though occasionally you’ll see guest work on those sites).

      If you’re a freelancer and don’t have a team, perhaps you could consider rounding up a crew of guest bloggers to help carry the load (like Jason Falls did for his blog http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/about/ Disclosure: I’m one of the writers).

      Does that help?

  • http://www.atticusuncensored.com Heidi Alberti & Atticus Uncensored

    Thanks Andrew! Yes, that helps. And good idea with the guest spots. I’ll check out the link.

    Waggy day to you!

  • http://www.citygirlconfidence.com Grace Kelly

    Thanks for advice!

  • http://almost60really.com Paula Lee Bright

    I am so glad to have my feelings confirmed a bit. I don’t enjoy the splashy, quick, punch-ya-in-the-gut posts that some are so fond of pushing out, because I’m an addicted reader. My house is dangerous to walk in due to towering piles of books. So I like meatier content, be it humor, politics, blogging advice, or other.

    Another one you didn’t mention is the recommendation to keep things at a grade school reading level. Really? If I’m talking about something more complex, dang it, I wanna use my own words! I don’t enjoy dumbing something down. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this point. :)

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Thanks for the comment, Paula Lee. When reading it, I’m reminded of lyrics from a Jay Z song: “I dumb down for my audience, And double my dollars.” It’s sad, from an intellectual point of view, to see this sort of thing happen. But from an audience-building point of view, it sort of makes sense. The more easily-understandable your content is, the wider your audience. However, that might not be right for someone who is trying to hit a certain caliber of audience (e.g. Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, etc.)

      Also, when you get a chance, watch the movie Idiocracy. You might get a kick out of it.

  • http://www.mindsharenet.com Jeff Kryger

    Nice research and post as always Andrew. Do you think that for the most part these blogs practice conventional wisdom, but it is those rare times when they really hit something dead on that they would do their longer post, and have it be the most popular?

    Also you mentioned searchengineland.com driving up the post count. For the most part it seems that these blogs only show up once per day on my RSS feed, so the above 2 average did surprise me

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Thanks, Jeff. I’m not sure how rare it is for them to break above 700 words or so. If you look at a lot of the archived material from some of these sources, a lot of the posts have a higher word count than you might expect. True, when they produce a truly exhaustive post it’ll likely be more popular because it is linked to so much, but even in the day-to-day, a lot of these posts are longer than they might seem. (Good writing will make more words seem like less).

      For the averages, I went back a few years on each of these blogs, so it could be that they’ve tweaked to more of a daily approach lately. However, I think the main takeaway is that you’ve got to be at least daily (business days, at the VERY least) to be relevant. Thoughts?

      • http://www.mindsharenet.com Jeff Kryger

        Thanks for the reply. Your logic on the post count makes sense. I am just getting into the RSS game and certainly notice that they post something new everyday. And I do notice that the blogs/posts I enjoy most normally have more substance to them (research, charts, etc.) than a simple bullet list or 2 paragraph post

  • Ann Donnelly

    So glad you posted the link to this again. Somehow missed it the first time around. A lot of these techniques are good seo, whether intentional or not. Some of it seems like common sense. Don’t think they’re intentionally trying to deceive but in creating that amount of content on a regular basis you’d often have to resort to cliches and sometimes making stuff up. I’m
    amazed by the amount of quality content you’re able to put out on a regular basis. A lot of these people are full time bloggers, or recycling content from training and speaking they’re doing. If you are full time running another type of business you’d go crazy trying to keep up! If any one wants to team up on a group blog, let me know!

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Thanks for the comment, Ann. A group blog sounds interesting – what did you have in mind? Many hands make light work, am I right??

  • http://thewordchef.com Tea Silvestre

    I found your site via some research I’ve been doing for an upcoming post on engaging your prospects online. Not sure the roundabout way I got here, but like what I’ve seen so far. Holy guacamole on the research, man. That must’ve taken some doing…but happy you shared with us.

    Re: a group blog thing…I’d like to invite you and Ann to participate in a group blog carnival I’m putting together (the impetus for my research on engaging online) for later this month. Here are the details: http://thewordchef.com/blog-carnivals. I’m announcing the line-up of bloggers early next week, so please let me know if you’d like to play in the sandbox. If not, I’ll be doing this once each month.

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  • http://www.verticalmeasures.com/accelerate/ Arnie Kuenn

    Andrew,
    Just saw this post via an email from idealaunch. I can’t argue with those 10 blogs but you might want to consider adding http://www.convinceandconvert.com/ by Jay Baer. Excellent blog covering content marketing.

    Arnie
    author of Accelerate!

    • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

      Hi Arnie,

      Jay’s blog is great, you’re right. I actually subscribe to it myself.

      For the purposes of this post though, I just grabbed from the top of the AdAge power list to discover trends. This definitely isn’t an authoritative study but it does give us an idea of what it takes.

      Thanks for dropping by.

      • http://www.verticalmeasures.com/accelerate/ Arnie Kuenn

        Ahhh I did not read carefully enough, now I see how you determined the list.

        • http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly

          It’s the Internet – I don’t blame you for scanning.

  • http://www.mandarainmaker.co.uk Chris Windley

    Very interesting research Andrew – thank you.

    Nikki Pilkington suggested that I start my M&A Rainmaker blog on WordPress a number of years ago and I am very grateful to her for that recommendation. It’s a great, simple platform.

    Regards, Chris.

  • hima chhag

    have come to know something out of thoughts.
    article really leads to think more and more about it.
    good tips.
    thanx.

  • CanonHui

    Your blog post is really interesting because you listed some “dos” recommended by other popular bloggers and turned them as “don’ts” (with strong support ideas). I think your points of view are correct, I aggree, and you make me think in another way of how the top posts are created. I am also glad to see how you collected these information for your analysis. I’m a new blogger so these links are quite helpful to me. Thanks for the sharing!

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  • http://stanleyrao.net/ Stanley Rao

    Content works well only when you write and listen to what people say

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