• Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links.
• B2B marketers using blogs generate 67% more leads.
• Websites with blogs have 434% more indexed pages.
• 90% of consumers find custom content useful.
• 82% of consumers enjoy reading relevant content from brands.
• 70% of consumers learn about a company through content rather than ads.
• 81% of companies consider their blogs “useful,” “important,” or “critical.”
• Once you write 21-54 blog posts, blog traffic generation increases by up to 30%.
• Blog articles with images get 94% more views.
• Content creation is ranked as the single most effective SEO technique by 53% of businesses.
• If a blog is more than 1,500 words on average it receives 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more FB likes.

Those are some blogtastic numbers that support what we all knew, right? Regular blogging is good business, “critical” perhaps.

So as you go about your blogging, what are the key elements you must capture to pen a successful blog?

The Content Marketing Institute provided adequate insight in an article titled “3 THINGS to Learn from the World’s 3 Most Popular blogs.”

The three blogs, Huffington Post, TMZ and Business Insider are popular for a reason, and only get more popular as time goes on. Viral popularity feeds popularity, snowballing into a massive cultural force.

But are these websites truly blogs? Yes. A blog is bigger than you might think.

Blog, noun:  a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.

So each is a blog that just so happens to employee huge staffs that create massive amounts of content. Here is a tip from each to ensure your blogs success.

1. Find and publish killer content:
   The Huffington Post has 110 million estimated unique monthly visitors. So how does the HuffPost publish some of the most viral articles on the internet? Because they are news aggregators. The HuffPost not only writes its own articles but employs people to find articles others have written on the web and publish them on their domain.
   
   The result is maniacal sharing and instant popularity.
   
   The HuffPost’s most popular article in the past year was: “5 Reasons You Should Have Sex With Your Husband Every Night.” It was written by a blogger named Meg Conley who posted it on her blog in 2012!
   
   Because it aggregates, HuffPost resonates with bloggers and fans of many niche groups. You may choose not to aggregate, but you can offer your blogs to syndication or use one of HuffPost’s tricks of inviting popular bloggers to post as a guest on your site.
   
   
2. Feed and fuel curiosity:
   
   TMZ has 30 million unique monthly visitors. It is a website about celebrities, or actually it’s an unabashed gossip site that is insanely popular. Why do we like to watch, or are so interested in celebrities?
   
   “We are insatiable curious beings. Curiosity is ingrained in the body’s neurology, empowering our learning, our discovery, and even motivating our actions. Add celebrities into the mix and we are curious about how the elite live with fame and fortune – sometimes a life to which we aspire.” - Keith O’Brien
   
   TMZ feeds this desire for such information while feeding and sustaining the desire for more content on the subject.
   
   The headlines – specific, salacious, and appealing – pique curiosity.
   
   Each of TMZ’s headlines tantalizes with information, but leaves readers wanting just a bit more. Thankfully, celebrity sites don’t have a monopoly on curiosity. Our goal is to engage the curiosity of our readers to elicit their engagement.
   
   
3. Know your audience absolutely

Business Insider has 25.5 million estimated unique monthly visitors. It is bigger than CNBC and outperforms Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and many other massive news sites. It does so because it knows who it is trying to reach.

Young, affluent, business-focused males, many Wall Street traders who consume content during the workday, averaging four minutes on the site is its audience. Business Insider makes the most of this audience and its proclivity for engaging headlines, its love of business news, and its human curiosity about celebs, clothing tips, and cool start-ups.

“I like that they pull no punches. They find stories that you would sit and discuss with your friends and associates, that are topical, interesting, and often give a unique side of a story. I’m a big fan.” - Mark Cuban

How do you create content that people would sit and discuss with friends? You have to know for whom you are writing.

Everything about content marketing rests on this one point – Who is your audience?

Defining your target audience is critical to the success of any marketing effort, especially content marketing.

It all comes down to great content.

You don’t need a star staff, a celebrity endorsement or a $7 million round of funding to be successful in the content marketing game. You have all you need right now.

(Want more stats? Checkout this infographic, "13 Blogging Statistics You Probably Don't Know But Shoud")

Here is an example of how blogging helped one of our clients