On a summer night long ago, we had an idea: if we got enough content marketers to take a survey, we could answer some big, unanswered questions about marketing.
Every year since then, we’ve repeated the survey, and the data keeps getting more interesting. The dataset shows 12 years of trends in content marketing. You can see the rise and fall of promotion channels, the word-count arms race and the breathtaking adoption rate of AI.
You are about to discover:
- How are marketers using AI?
- Which AI methods correlate with success?
- How long does content take to create?
- How has the length of articles changed over time?
- Are bloggers publishing more or less often?
- Which content strategies drive results in 2025?
At the end of this report, you’ll see exactly which actions and elements are most likely to drive results and, ironically, how those are often the least common approaches to content marketing.
Sit back, scan through and use any of the charts for your next meeting or article. All we ask is that you cite this original source. We hope these insights trigger ideas for adjustments in your content strategy.
How effective is content marketing in 2025?
We’ll start with effectiveness. 21% of our 808 respondents reported “strong results” and we use that number as a benchmark for analysis throughout the report. We’ll find the correlations and discover what’s working well for content marketers.
The effectiveness of content marketing has shifted over time. Year after year, around 80% of marketers report success, but for the last seven years, we see a trend of fewer marketers reporting big results. Content marketing is resilient and effective, but not easy.
Producing and promoting content is a big job and a long-term commitment. Content feeds the email program and social streams, it connects the brand to influencers, it builds awareness, trust and loyalty. Content also trains the AI language models.
How much content does it take?
Here are the trends for content length and frequency. Over the last 12 years, content has gotten a little shorter and a little less frequent. First, we’ll look at word count.
The war of word count may finally be over. The trend toward ultimate guides super long posts, long driven by SEOs and their skyscraper technique, is reversing. How long is the average article in 2025? The answer is 1333 words.
That doesn’t mean that longer content isn’t driving better performance. It is. Content marketing programs that prioritize detailed articles are far more likely to drive results. The correlation between content length and “strong results” is one of the strongest in the report.
The other way to put more words on the web is to publish more often. How has publishing frequency changed over time? It has come down. High-volume publishing was once very popular, but today about half of all marketers publish 2-4 times per month.
Again, more content correlates with better results. The marketers who publish more often are more likely to report “strong results.” These aren’t the same marketers who publish 2000+ word articles, but the data is clear: the best bloggers go big in one way or another.
 |
Joe Pulizzi, The Tilt“Blogging may be entering a similar period to where email was in 2007. Many businesses dropped email in favor of social media because they thought email was going away (what a bad decision that was). Today, more and more seem to be discounting blogging because of AI. Those people who decide to drop blogging because of AI will be making a poor strategic decision. When more businesses consider dropping blogging, it creates an opportunity for those who continue. The results, however defined, seem to show this. And blogging could be the trojan horse for getting found in AI results.” |
All of this content takes time to produce and promote. We ask respondents how much time they spend on a typical article. When we average the answers, we can calculate the average time spent per piece and answer this question: How long does it take to write a blog post in 2025? The answer is just under three and a half hours.
The time spent on each article has come down in the last few years, possibly because of AI.
Let’s look at how AI has impacted content marketing. Marketers are using AI in all kinds of ways. First, notice that the percentage of marketers who don’t use AI has fallen from 65% to just 5% over the last 24 months. AI has transformed the work of content marketing fast and forever.
The ways we use AI has changed dramatically over the last 24 months. Few marketers use it for everything (just one in ten use AI to write complete articles) but more marketers are building AI into their workflows. Last year “generate ideas” was the most popular use case. This year it’s tied with “suggest edits.”
But more AI doesn’t necessarily mean more success. In fact, the AI-enabled marketers who use it to write complete articles are the least likely to report “strong results.” None of the other AI use cases really correlates much with content performance.
Some marketers use AI for everything. Others use it for nothing. These groups are the least like the drive results. The answer is somewhere in the middle. Not too much AI, not too little.
The AI hold-outs are the least likely to report “strong results.” Why don’t content marketers use AI more? You can see what the top concerns in our AI content marketing report.
 |
Henneke Duistermaat, Enchanting Marketing“These are interesting times for bloggers. With zero-click social platforms, drops in search traffic, and experimentation with AI, everything feels in flux. But the basic premise of good content marketing remains true: To focus on creating valuable content for our audience. The survey results suggest that using AI as an assistant could be slightly beneficial but outsourcing all content creation to AI could be detrimental to blogging results. It is still early days and the results are not statistically significant yet because the group not using A.I. is very small. We need to experiment more but for now it remains true: Human content wins.” |
 |
Mark Schaefer, Speaker, Author, Marketing Strategist“This is the first year we’ve seen the impact of AI in a significant way but there hasn’t been an improvement in results. Too many content marketers are focusing on using AI to cut some corners instead of doubling down on quality.” |
Next, we examine what marketers are putting into their content. “Content” is a big word and includes many things. Here are some of the elements that appear in articles and their relative popularity.
Nearly everyone adds pictures. But a minority are adding contributor quotes and videos. A small percentage add audio or publish podcasts. The less common the element, the more likely it is to correlate with performance. Greater efforts drive greater impact.
Some content is more visual than others. The majority of bloggers include a few images, but a tiny minority of bloggers add a lot of visuals to each article. These marketers are far more likely to report strong performance.
Next we’ll look at the content formats more broadly. Here is the relative popularity of various types of content. Unsurprising, most content programs are anchored in utility content. Most of us publish how-to articles. Some of the other formats are far less popular.
Which content formats correlate with performance? It’s the long formats (guides and ebooks) and the collaborative formats (interviews and roundups). Webinars are also effective and are often another example of collaborative content (interviews with experts and influencers).
 |
Jay Schwedelson, Outcome Media“The keyword here is ‘effective’. Often the content that generates the ‘most leads’ is not the most effective. For example – if someone attends a full webinar they are more valuable than someone who downloads a listicle.” |
 |
Lars Lofgren, larslofgren.com“Write a post that’s so good that people will want to share it in their professional communities: Slack chats, paid membership groups, talk about it on their socials, etc. The quality bar comes first. As for the post type, use whatever type gets you to that quality bar for that piece.” |
Original research is one of those content formats that correlate with performance. This wasn’t a common strategy seven years ago, but the word is out. Marketers who conduct and publish new original data (like this report) are driving results. Today, almost half of content programs publish original research and 25% of those who do report “strong results.”
Are content marketers working with editors in 2025? Yes, more bloggers are getting editing help. The informal approaches to editing have been on the decline for 12 years. But now, the help isn’t just coming from humans. AI is suddenly doing the job of editors.
And it seems to be effective. Marketers who use AI as an editor are just as likely to report “strong results” as those who use a team of human editors.
 |
Chima Mmeje, Moz“Editing was one of the first AI use cases I adopted. I realized that it cut editing time in half, and all I had to do was create an editorial guideline, feed it some sample data, and guide it on my preferred tone of voice. ChatGPT is an excellent editor, but it only works if a great writer guides it. I specifically use it to improve storytelling, repurpose content for a first-person narrative, and tighten sentences for flow and engagement. It’s great to see so many content folks adopting AI for editing.” |
Now let’s look at content promotion. Promotion channels have changed over the years. Of course, virtually all content marketers share their content on social media. Around a third of marketers promote content using SEO and email marketing. Paid channels and influencer collaboration are far less common.
 |
Ross Simmonds, Foundation Marketing“The research points out a HARD FACT which is that content promotion is easier now than it used to be. With tools like Distribution.AI, Opus, Riverside, HubSpot, and others, the heavy lifting of repurposing and distributing content is no longer a multi-hour, manual grind. It used to take a marketer an entire afternoon to turn a single post into a set of LinkedIn updates, email snippets, and social posts… Now, you can paste in a URL, run it through tools like these, and within seconds have a package of ready-to-publish content tailored for multiple channels—organic, paid, email, and more. It’s WAY less challenging.” |
Again, the less common the method, the more likely it is to correlate with content performance. One in three marketers who pay to make their content more visible report “strong results.” Influencer collaboration is equally uncommon and equally effective.
Influencer collaborations often include interviews and roundups. But there’s also the simple practice of including contributor quotes in articles, as we have done in this report. But most content marketers do not consistently include influencers in their content. Only a few of us do it every time.
Content marketers who collaborate with influencers more often are far more likely to report “strong results.” Collaboration with experts improves the quality of the content but also its reach. An ally in content creation is an ally in content promotion.
 |
Ashley Zeckman, CEO, Onalytica“Incorporating influencers into blog content isn’t just about reach; it’s about credibility and depth. When expert voices are woven into articles, brands elevate trust, spark richer conversations, and create content that resonates far beyond their own channels. Influencer collaboration turns good blogs into must-reads.” |
 |
Goldie Chan, Agency owner and Author of Personal Branding for Introverts“In 2026, the most successful content isn’t a solo masterpiece, but a collaborative ecosystem. Bloggers who grow their audiences and platforms will be those who have built and nurtured frequent, meaningful partnerships with influencers to expand their reach. This strategy creates a powerful network of trust, where a single post can build a brand far more effectively than any solo effort.” |
 |
Alexandra Rynne, LinkedIn“The formats that perform best—original research, webinars, comprehensive guides—are exactly the types of content that build credibility and establish thought leadership. This aligns perfectly with our LinkedIn research showing that decision-makers are more receptive to content from trusted voices and expert sources. Yet most content creators are defaulting to basic cookie-cutter how-to articles that don’t establish the kind of credibility these buyers demand. This represents a massive opportunity for B2B marketers willing to invest in higher-value content formats. While everyone else is creating how-to articles, smart marketers can differentiate themselves with original research and comprehensive guides that actually influence buying decisions. Video will transform these categories entirely. The 27% growth in video creation we’re seeing on LinkedIn suggests that static content formats will need to evolve. How-to articles will become how-to video series, and webinars will shift toward interactive, AI-enhanced experiences.” |
The disruption to organic search traffic is one of the biggest marketing stories of 2025. Clickthrough rates to content have fallen for the last five years. Now with AI, traffic to content from Google is dropping fast.
When we asked content marketers about their challenges, “attracting visitors from search” has spiked. Really, nothing is getting easier.
Among SEOs, there is broad agreement on the problem, and many points of view on how to adapt.
 |
Cyrus Shepard, Zyppy“Every year, as the data shows, attracting visitors from search engines becomes a bigger content marketing challenge. As AI drives down the cost and time of production, marketers should focus on what AI can’t easily reproduce (and what Google wants to reward): original research, proprietary data, video, podcasts, user-generated content, and first-person perspectives. The biggest mistake you could make is using AI to produce what everyone else is making.” |
 |
Noah Learner, Sterling Sky“2025 feels like the year where as an industry all see that the great decoupling is real. Organic clicks from search are down between 10-20% while LLM traffic is contributing 1% net new traffic and leads. The message is clear: our old model for generating traffic and leads is broken. We now need to go where our ideal fit customers are hanging out and share our unique points of view on the problems they face. These places include private communities on Slack and WhatsApp, support forums, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok. And producing Video + Podcast content in different lengths and formats is more important now more than ever.“ |
 |
Brendan Hufford, Growth Sprints“It’s getting harder and harder to get people to our website and, to me, it’s never been more obvious that content marketing = zero click marketing and now we have the data to prove it. Every platform is doing everything they can to keep users on it, including Google. If you want to become your audience’s favorite, you have to meet them where they’re at. Only ask them to come to your site when you have something truly unique that you can’t share anywhere else.” |
Are content marketers giving up on SEO? No, we are not. Google is still 370x more popular than ChatGPT and there are ways to get AI to recommend your brand. Most marketers are still doing their keyword research and aligning pages and phrases.
Marketers who understand SEO are still driving visibility to their content. Even as clickthrough rates decline, search-savvy content pros know which topics are in demand and how content discovery works. They know that some keywords remain undisrupted. These marketers are more likely to report “strong results.”
 |
Karine Abbou – karineabbou.com“Since 2022, AI has fueled the “everything is dead” marketing hype. SEO? Dead. Content Marketing? Dead. The reality? It’s not death, it’s evolution. SEO is no longer a race for ranking; it’s a game of discoverability in an answer-engine world. Content Marketing pivoted from generic TOFU fluff to sharp, opinionated MOFU that converts. The blog is following this exact path. The “lexicon” blog—that soulless catalog of SEO articles? Yes, that’s dead. For good. But the blog as a vehicle for your opinion, original research, and story has a bright future. It’s the ultimate tool for building human authority and for networking.“ |
One of the few shortcuts in content marketing is to simply write for places where your audience spends time. This type of digital PR, or just “guest blogging” in its simplest form, is still a powerful way to promote your stories and grow your domain authority. It’s also an effective way to train AI language models.
But most content marketers don’t write for other websites. Those that do are most likely to drive outcomes.
 |
Marisa Lather, Marketing and Branding Consultant“Guest blogging has multiple strategic benefits and is one of the lowest-cost, yet most impactful tactics to build trust and expand brand awareness. Bloggers who publish through external outlets tap into a new audience, position themselves as experts, and build lasting digital authority. And because only 37% of bloggers leverage external sources, those who embrace guest posting early are more likely to be noticed for their thought leadership. Publishing through respected platforms validates both the author as a credible human source, creating a faster path to trust.“ |
Another difference across content marketers is the use of data. Most marketers still do not consistently measure performance with analytics. Only a third of us check the performance of each published article.
Less data means fewer opportunities to adjust for the next post and optimize the previous post. These content marketers likely learn more slowly. These content strategies likely adapt more slowly. The difference is clear in the data. The more the marketer uses analytics, the more likely they are to report “strong results.”
 |
Pete Caputa, Databox“It amazes me that in 2025, people are publishing content without monitoring performance after they press publish. So much is measurable now: reach, resonance, conversions. And it’s the only way to know which content to promote more and which topics to write more about.” |
In the final analysis, we put all of the aspects of a content program that correlate the most with performance into a single chart.
Here is a summary of the performance data.
The most effective marketers publish long-form, highly visual content in collaboration with influencers, including original research. They align content with keywords and aren’t afraid to spend some money to drive visibility. They record videos, write for many websites and watch their analytics.
 |
Ann Handley, MarketingProfs“These results tell a story of how blogging is both maturing and fragmenting. Blogging (and content) works… but it’s harder than ever to break through. Success now requires more deliberate choices. The marketers seeing strong results are the ones leaning into the “harder” plays: long-form content, visuals, excellent editing, influencer collaborations, original research. Meanwhile, shortcuts like “AI writes everything” or skipping analytics aren’t paying off. “Think of it like a gym membership: Results come to those who show up and sweat (via long-form, visuals, research, influencer collabs). Notice how I didn’t add AI to that list? It’s because everyone’s using it. (Except for a tiny percentage–who ARE they?!) The winners treat AI like a workout buddy. The losers hand AI their Fitbit and go wait in the car.” |
And yet, these are the least common approaches to content marketing. Here are the greatest gaps. These are the least used, most effective approaches to content marketing.
Gratitude
First, a big thanks to the 12,971 bloggers who responded to the survey over the last 12 years. By far, the biggest challenge of this annual project is getting people to respond to the 2-minute survey. We use email and social media, but it always comes down to a lot of one-to-one messages and shares by influential friends. We know it’s no fun to be the target of direct outreach. We sincerely appreciate everyone who responded. So grateful.
Next, we need to thank our contributors. We basically outsource the analysis to some of the smartest minds in marketing. Thank you to all the subject matter experts who were part of this.
And finally, to the Orbiteers who do so much to support this project, from the first steps to the last. That’s you Amanda and Jantzen! So so grateful for your help.
Methodology and Data
The dataset includes 808 content marketers. The respondents to this survey are mostly marketers with whom we connected over many years on social media and from the marketing community. Data was captured using a simple one-page survey of 24 questions.
- No one was incentivized to take the survey in any way
- The dataset is heavily populated with my personal network, which skews toward LinkedIn users, B2B marketers and US-based marketers
- Responses were gathered in August of 2025
- This is a survey of bloggers (individuals), not companies or brands (groups)
- AI was used to help find correlations in the dataset. Everything else was done by hand.
- “Strong results” is deliberately left vague because respondents’ goals are diverse. We asked respondents how they define success. Here is one final chart with that data…
