• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 19, 2013

According to a Blog post by Wishpond, companies that blog have 55% more traffic to their websites, and marketers now spend 25% of their marketing budget on content marketing, and 68% of consumers spend time reading content from brands they are interested in, and so on…

But wait, there’s more. The included Infographic from the Wishpond site, titled "The State of Content Marketing 2013," showing how companies are using content marketing and how consumers interact with it, is summarized in this Research Brief as text to keep with your VFOGI (vast fund of general information). Content sources are included following the text.

A Salesforce Blog says that a search of “start content marketing” yields 369,000,000 queries, but here is a selected potpourri of data showing how companies are using content marketing to sell, and how consumers interact with it.

• $118.4 Billion will be spent on content marketing, video marketing and social media in 2013
• Marketers spend over 25% of their marketing budget on content marketing
• Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links
• 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing
• 78% of CMOs think custom content is the future of marketing
• 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing
• 62% of companies outsource their content marketing
• B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month
• Companies with less than 10 employees allocate 42% of their marketing budget on content
• Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social media
• Social media and blogs reach 8 out of 10 of all U.S. Internet users
• Organic search leads have a 14.6% close rate
• Outbound marketing leads have a 1.7% close rate
• 79% of B2B marketers use content marketing to achieve brand awareness goals
• Articles with images get 94% more views
• 78% of consumers feel that organizations behind the content are interested in building relationships
• 61% of B2B marketers rate webinars as the most effective content marketing tactic
• 37% of marketers say blogs are the most valuable type of content marketing
• 58% of consumers trust editorial content
• 68% of consumers spend time reading content from a brand in which they are interested
• Social media and blogs account for 23% of all time spent online
• 87% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute content
• 90% of consumers find custom content useful

Sources:

            Impact of photos on Facebook engagement…

            Impact of Twitter on brands…

            How users interact on Pinterest…

            Or, to visit Wishpond, please go here.