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TrackMaven Content Marketing Report Table of Contents

I. Introduction: V. Blog Posting Strategies

What is Content Marketing? Most Frequent Bloggers

The History of the Blog Most Shares for Top Blogs By Posting Frequency Data Introduction Most Shared Blogs II. Schedule Case Study: The Meaning Behind What day of week is most Gawker Media’s Virality effective for blog posts?

What time of day is most VI. Key Findings and Conclusion effective for blog posts? III. Title Analysis

What’s the ideal blog title length?

Does title punctuation effect blog engagement?

How does title capitalization effect engagement?

Most common words in titles IV. Social Analysis by Channel

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report I. Introduction

What is Content Every year marketers are Marketing? spending more money Content Marketing is a on content marketing form of owned marketing efforts in order to increase that involves emails, blog brand awareness and posts, guest posts, white to drive more inbound Blog posts are papers, ebooks, webinars, leads into their funnels. a sum of content case studies, website Rather than reporting on the marketing’s parts copy, infographics, FAQs, varied effectiveness of each and social media content. and every type of content Anything involving pieces marketing, we chose to of media or text that require focus on the blog. Why? Blog some type of copy to be posts are a sum of content written or published is a marketing’s parts, often form of content marketing. combining the statistics and Content Marketing represents research of white papers, a large part of inbound ebooks, and case studies with marketing, and its overall the design of an infographic, goal in any campaign is to but with greater length try to acquire more leads, than social media posts prospects, or customers. It and greater personalization is used to provide education than website content. and value for these potentials.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report The History of the Blog blog-publishing platform created by Pyra Labs, which The first blog is credited was eventually acquired to a Swarthmore College by Google in 2003. Blogs are Blog platform student named Justin Hall, called Blogger bought The first blog The word “blog” weblogs by google is created becomes a word who in 1994 created the While individuals have used site Links.net. However, blogs as an online version the term “blog” didn’t enter of a personal diary since our lexicon until several the beginning, corporations 1994 1997 1999 2003 years later. The invention of and media giants alike the word was a joint effort have adopted the blog as between John Barger, who a forum to spread brand coined the term “weblog” in awareness and engage and/ 1997 as a shortened version or entertain their audience. of “logging the Web,” and Peter Merholz, who truncated the term to “blog” in 1999.

Blogging rose in popularity for personal use as easy- to-use blogging tools became more mainstream, including Blogger.com, the

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report Data Introduction For this report, we analyzed 4,618 blogs and collected At TrackMaven, our own all posts for each of these company blog is our forum blogs through April 3, to share the quirks of 2014, for a grand total of our culture, address our 1,167,426 posts. For each customers’ pain points and post, we analyzed trends in FAQs, and share proactive engagement by capturing marketing insights. Many of How can analytics the number of social shares, the questions we hear from which came to a grand total inform better content customers and colleagues of 1,915,428,305 social center around content. creation strategies? shares for the data set. How can we use analytics to inform better content While blog post engagement creation strategies? How can come in many forms, can we develop the ideal throughout this report, we content publishing strategy? will define the engagement This analysis is an endeavor or effectiveness of a to shed more insight on blog post by the number those and other content of social shares. marketing questions.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report II. Schedule

Posting Frequency vs Average Social Shares by Day of Week Millions of blog posts are What day of week is most published every day, but 25% blog posts? Social shares is there a “best” time to 20% Posting frequency When we look at the most publish? We broke down frequent days of the week for 15% the posting schedule for publishing blog posts, we can our data set by day of the 10% see that content marketers week and time of day, and have been focusing their 5% analyzed both for the most

0% with the most posts published Mon Tues Weds Thurs Fri Sat Sun Days of Week in order of on Tuesday and Wednesday. Day of Week avg. posting frequency: Of the 1.2M posts we

1. Tuesday & Wednesday (tied): analyzed, a whopping 87% 18% of all posts published were posted during the 3. Thursday : 17.9% workweek. However, the 4. Monday: 17.2% 5. Friday: 15.9% 13% of posts published on 6. Sunday: 6.8% weekends raked in the most 7. Saturday: 6.3% social shares. Saturday is particularly ripe for content Days of Week in order of avg. social shares: marketers to reap a massive ROI; while only 6.3% of 1. Saturday: 18% of all social shares posts were published on 2. Sunday: 14.6% 3. Tuesday, Wednesday & Saturdays, they received Thursday (tied):14.1% 18% of the total social 6. Friday: 12.7% shares. TrackMaven Content Marketing Report 7. Monday: 12.5% Posting Frequency Based on Time of Day What time of day is most However, when we look at blog post effectiveness 80000 effective for blog posts? by time of day there is an The top left graph shows 64000 inverse effect; the peaks of the distribution of posting engagement are clustered 48000 time for our entire blog data outside of working hours. set, which has a mostly 32000 normal distribution. There is In the bottom left graph, we

16000 a noticeable influx of blog can see that blogs posted Average Post Frequency Post Average posts coming within normal between 9PM-midnight EST 0 work hours from roughly 9AM have the most social shares, 4-5a 6-7a 8-9a 10-11a 12-1p 2-3p 4-5p 6-7p 8-9p 10-11p 12-1a 2-3a to 6PM EST, with the highest with 10-11PM as the highest Time of Day

Social Shares Based on Time of Day point at 11AM-12PM with point of engagement. There 6.53% of posts published are also secondary spikes in 3500 then. However, while engagement between 4-6AM, 2800 posting frequency steadily 7-8PM, and 1-2AM EST. declines after 6PM EST, 2100 there is a secondary spike

1400 in posts from 12-1AM EST at 3.17%, most likely due to Average Social Shares Average 700 scheduled posts at the start of the next business day. 0 4-5a 6-7a 8-9a 10-11a 12-1p 2-3p 4-5p 6-7p 8-9p 10-11p 12-1a 2-3a Time of Day

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report This contrast between just because your content blogging frequency and is educational or work- social shares by time of day related doesn’t mean it shows that content marketers should come during working who are publishing outside hours. Your audience’s of work hours are getting craving for educational or above-average engagement. entertaining content is innate, While your brand’s blog so engage your readers Try connecting content might be aimed at during the time they have with your professional growth, leisure to indulge that craving. hours are readers’ preferred audience outside time to read, reflect, and share of work hours the content that resonates most with them. So content marketers, take note –

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report III. Title Analysis

Post Title Length Distribution vs Social Shares We’ve all been told not What’s the ideal blog title

25% to judge a book by its length? Social shares cover… but do we judge In this graph, we see a Frequency 20% a blog post by its title? relatively normal bell A typical marketing adage curve for title length, with 15% advises that we should follow the most frequent titles containing 40 characters. 10% the 80/20 rule when creating a post, assuming only 80% However, the distribution 5% of people will look at your of social shares peaks headline and then only 20% farther to the right, with 0% 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 will read the whole post. 60-character titles receiving Total Characters in Title With that in mind, creating the most social shares. a great headline or title is For content marketers who of the utmost importance are masters of SEO and to entice your audience to long-tail keywords, the keep reading past the title greater effectiveness of and absorb the entire blog 60-character titles could post you worked so hard on. play to your strengths. That To this point, we took a said, don’t overdo it – blogs closer look at trends in with titles beyond the 60 blog post titles to uncover character length saw a sharp correlations between decline in social shares. title and engagement.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report Usage of Question Marks in Title vs Social Shares Does title punctuation blog titles that included

100% effect blog engagement? a single question mark Social shares has 46.30% social shares, Frequency The vast majority of the 80% nearly double that for titles over 1 million blog posts without question marks. we analyzed stuck with 60% declarative headlines. However, there is a fine

40% But isn’t content consumption line between appealing to driven by our inquisitive, our human curiosity with

20% excitable human nature? a question and exuding spamminess; the average In the top left graph we 0% engagement was lowest 0 1 2 3 see the frequency and Number of Question Marks in Title for titles that went effectiveness of question overboard with two or Usage of Exclamation Marks in Title vs Social Shares marks in blog titles. Looking 100% more question marks. at the high y-intercept of Social shares

Frequency this graph, we can see that While punctuating with 75% 94.89% of blog posts did not a single question mark include a question mark. correlated with higher 50% However, our analysis engagement, the chart on shows that there is a the bottom left illustrates

25% noticeable peak in the that the same is not true for average percentage of exclamation points. Few blog

0% social shares for blog posts titles use exclamation points 0 1 2 3 4 5 with a question contained (97.24% without), and for Number of Exclamation Marks in Title in the title. The 5.01% of good reason – the average TrackMaven Content Marketing Report social shares decreased While that result might tempt for titles that added up you to exclaim away in your to 3 exclamation points. blog titles, make sure that Interestingly, while less than the “!!!!” level of excitement 0.1% of posts were so bold is appropriate to your as to include 4 exclamation content and your audience. points, those that did Again, as human beings we saw 2,027 social shares crave content that appeals on average, accounting to our inherent curiosity for 33.72% of the total. We crave content and excitability, and we Lukewarm excitement, it share what we care most that appeals to our seems, is forgettable, but real about. So rather than using excitement!!!! is share–worthy. inherent curiosity another declarative headline, consider adding some color with punctuation.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report Usage of Uppercase Letters in Title vs Social Shares How does title to evoke e.e. cummings than 50% capitalization effect Social shares to shout at their readers, Frequency engagement? 40% as 12.14% of blog titles had The graph below shows the no capitalization, while less 30% frequency and social shares than 1% were written with

20% compared to the ratio of Caps Lock. The majority uppercase letters in blog of content marketers, 10% titles, with an uppercase however, are getting it just

0% ration of 1 meaning ALL right, as the peak for both 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

Uppercase Ratio (1 = ALL CAPS) CAPS. At the extreme ends of frequency and social shares the spectrum, it seems more correlates with standard content creators are inclined capitalization practices.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report Top 20 Words from Blog Titles Most Common Words in Titles 50000 The chart to the left shows the frequency of narrative 40000 words in blog titles. “Your” and “You” top the list by 30000 leaps and bounds, accounting for a combined total of 38% of narrative title words. 20000 Considering “your” and Count Used in a Title “you” are hallmarks of the 10000 2nd person point-of-view to directly address the reader, 0

- this result underscores + it 5 & us will get can day first you free new best your says 2013 2014 that more personally- obama Words in Title directed content is the benchmark for blogging.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report IV. Social Channel Analysis

While a blog may have the ideal platform for your brand’s best intentions to improve blog will vary according to Social Shares by Channel the customer experience or a variety of factors, such as entertain the reader, it’s hard the subject matter and target 0.4% 0.5% to truly make a difference demographics. However,

38.6% and establish your brand a proactive marketer can 26.7% if no one is reading your strategically tailor content content. The good, if not to reach different audience LinkedIn Shares overwhelming, news is that subsets across a variety Pinterest Pins there are more channels of social networks. Facebook Shares than ever before to promote Facebook Likes Out of the nearly 2 billion Tweets content and reach your social shares in our data target audience. The social set, we found that the network that serves as the 33.8% majority of social shares

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report were on Facebook and With Facebook and Twitter Twitter. Tweets accounted boasting active user counts for 38.6% of the total social of 1 billion and 560 million, shares, with Facebook Likes respectively,it makes a close second with 33.8%. sense that nearly all social Content consumers were interaction came on those more likely to “like” a blog platforms. But with LinkedIn’s post on Facebook than to burgeoning active user base “share” it, as Facebook of 240 million and niche A proactive marketer Shares accounted for 26.7% of professionally-oriented of the total social shares. content, it’s particularly ripe is not limited to a Pinterest Pins and LinkedIn for B2B content marketers to single social network Shares were marginal see blog post engagement. players, with Pinterest Pins outpacing LinkedIn Shares by 0.1% (0.5% vs. 0.4%).

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report V. Blog Posting Strategies

Blogging Frequency vs Social Shares The baseline goal for any fulfill their expectations and

10000 piece of content is to strike appetites for new content on a chord with the desired a regular basis. However, that 8000 audience, and the zeitgeist doesn’t mean that more posts of “viral content” has placed per day is necessarily better. 6000 a premium on shareability. We see from the graph to the The volume of interactions left that while the majority of 4000 a post receives plays a the blogs are clustered with Average Social Shares / Post Average

2000 huge role in determining the fewer than 22.5 posts per effectiveness of a content day and 2,250 social shares

0 strategy. But while we’re per post on average, there 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Average Posts / Day exposed to viral content on a is a flurry of outliers with daily basis, how easy is it to varied posting frequency generate? Is it based on how and engagement. frequently someone blogs or how the content is conveyed? Most Frequent Bloggers First we looked at the outlets While most blogs in our who post most frequently… data set averaged fewer For most blogs, audience than 22.5 posts per engagement stems from day, we saw a handful of consistency. To develop your outliers with extremely blog into a habitual part of ambitious publishing your audience’s daily content schedules averaging well consumption, you have to TrackMaven Content Marketing Report over 80 posts per day. Most Frequent Bloggers: Posts per Day vs Shares per Post Out of the 4,618 blogs we 2) CNS News analyzed, the blogs with the 600 Aerosmith’s Joe Perry highest number of posts per Tweets ‘Freedom of Speech’ 500 day on average were Deal Defense of Duck Dynasty News, CNS News, and The 400 Globe and Mail. We pulled 78,866 total shares

300 the most shared posts from http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ michael-w-chapman/aerosmith- each source, and saw varying s-joe-perry-tweets-freedom- 200

Average Social Shares / Post Average results in engagement for speech-defense-duck-dynasty

100 these more real-time news and deal-oriented sites. 3) The Globe and Mail 0 50 100 150 200 Put your faces back Average Posts / Day Most shares for top blogs on, ladies: Why the by posting frequency: #nomakeupselfie trend has to stop 1) Deal News 40,661 total shares Best Laptop Deals: 2 Quad HD Laptops from HP and http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ life/put-your-faces-back-on-ladies- Samsung Starting at $699 why-the-nomakeupselfie-trend- has-to-stop/article17685301/ 131 total shares

http://dealnews.com/features/ best-laptop-deals/

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report Distribution of Total Shares (Log Scale) Ultimately though, we see Most Shared Blogs

4000 from the on the upper left You’re probably familiar with graph just how difficult it is the most shared blogs from 3000 to produce viral content. our analysis, as seen in the The number of posts that are lower left graph. Out of the 2000 able to generate social shares 4,618 blogs we analyzed,

Thousands of Social Shares 1000 well up into the thousands Gawker, Jezebel, and are small, as the graph Gizmodo had the highest

0 curves sharply downward average engagement per 0 10 100 1000 10000 Count of Posts (Log Scale) to hover over the x-axis. post. Gawker lead the pack Looking at the distribution with 224,153 social shares Most Shared Blogs: Posts per Day vs Shares per Post of social shares for over 1 per post and 83 posts per

250,000 million blog posts, we can day on average. Jezebel see that virality is achieved came in a close second with

200,000 by only a small minority 223,650 shares per post of blog posts. For greater and 21.9 posts per day on 150,000 insight, we took a closer average. Ringing in third look at the “viral” outliers, was Gizmodo, with 218,451 100,000 meaning those posts with shares per post and 20.8

Average Social Shares / Post Average the highest average number daily posts on average. 50,000 of social shares per post.

0 0 20 40 60 80 100

Average Posts / Day TrackMaven Content Marketing Report Top Posts from the Blogs with the Most Engagement Case Study: As all three of these most- shared blogs fall under the parent company of Gawker Media, it’s clear the online The Meaning media company has figured out a thing or two about blog virality. We pulled examples of the most shared posts Behind Gawker from each of our most shared blogs to take a closer look at the content and titles that are driving Gawker Media’s Virality Media’s huge engagement.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report 1 Gawker

(a) NPR Pulled a Brilliant April Fools’ Prank On People Who Don’t Read

224,197 total shares

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/ gawker/full/~3/3pnrQdCPuT0/ npr-pulled-a-brilliant-april-fools- prank-on-people-who-1557745710

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report 1 Gawker / io9

(b) Greatest Wedding Photo In the History of the World

278,770 total shares

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/ jezebel/full/~3/iOScXQgBsqI/ greatest-wedding-photo-in-the- history-of-the-world-510358157

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report 2 Jezebel

(a) I’m Biracial, and That Cheerios Ad Is a Big Fucking Deal. Trust Me.

293,865 total shares

http://jezebel.com/im-biracial- and-that-cheerios-ad-is-a-big- fucking-dea-510740851

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report 2 Jezebel

(b) Female ‘Purity’ Is Bullshit (subtitle: “FUCK ALL OF THAT”)

286,066 total shares

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/jezebel/ full/~3/Cbpct9elNEA/female- purity-is-bullshit-493278191

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report 3 Gizmodo / io9

(a) Stunning Behind-the- Scenes Photos Show Iconic Movies in a New Light

241,374 total shares

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/ full/~3/XTqZZFnNB80/stunning- behind-the-scenes-photos-show- iconic-movies-in-512190237

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report 3 Gizmodo/ io9

(b) The Myth of the CEO

224,162 total shares

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/ gawker/full/~3/LSeW4fOwkL4/the- myth-of-the-ceo-1557547904

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report The Meaning Behind Gawker Media Group Gawker Media’s Virality understands that virality Gawker Media Group, Inc. has doesn’t occur often, but when a base of 47,000,000 million it does it comes from content readers, over 2 million fans that adds value back to their on Facebook, and 3.3 million readership. Maybe the posts followers on Twitter. We aren’t life-changing thoughts, can attribute some of their but they connect emotionally success to the sheer size of with their audience and their their audience; however, the interests. Gawker Media tells individual posts above with stories that entertain and the most engagement were resonate with their readership entertaining, evocative, and enough to create a consistent tried to change the status stream of viral content. quo of our everyday culture.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report VI. Key Findings

Most posts are published on shares peaked with the Tuesday and Wednesday, use of 1 question mark. but the most social shares 12.14% percent of blog titles came on Saturday and used no capitalization, while Sunday. Consider publishing less than one percent use content on the weekend. ALL CAPS. Social shares The benchmark for title length correlate with standard is 40 characters, but blogs capitalization, so keep it Pique curiosity with titles of 60 characters standard. Facebook and with inquisitive had the most social shares. Twitter were the most popular channels for social Try phrasing blog titles shares, accounting for a blog titles as questions. Few blog combined 94.1% of the 1.9B titles used question social shares we analyzed. marks (94.89%), but social

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report Conclusion

The original intent of blogs From posting on the was to promote an individual weekends to stirring curiosity or brand’s own message. with question titles, a content They were a marketing marketer who wants to outlet bent on expanding drive impact understands reach with the underlying that their post needs to purpose of self-promotion. teach something useful to their audience, or strike at Put your Yet we’ve seen from the data the chord of our humanity, in this report that things have audience’s time like Gawker Media’s highly- changed since the birth of the shareable content. As and interests first blog. Blogging is no longer content marketing efforts about overtly spreading expand and consumers brand awareness, as the are ingesting more content marketers who prosper with than ever before, the most blogging effectiveness are successful blogs remember giving back to their readers. to put their audience’s time and interests first.

TrackMaven Content Marketing Report