Key takeouts from the Vuelio Bloggers Survey 2017

Vuelio has recently commissioned a survey about the state of the blogosphere. Here are some insights that I found the most interesting.

#1 Lifestyle as the most popular blogging category

The most popular blog categories were lifestyle, followed by parenting and fashion. Travel and food came next in the top 5. Noteworthy, the number of fashion and beauty blogs has declined since last year.

As survey reveals, men addressed a greater range of topics, with almost all categories represented. Women were focussed on fewer themes, particularly lifestyle, fashion and beauty, and parenting. As Vuelio remarks, male bloggers were more likely to use combinations of themes in their blogs e.g. travel, food and health, and to also lead on sport, film and TV and technology and gaming.

#2 Bloggers mostly write for fun

The survey has also examined the main incentives behind writing a blog. 34 per cent of respondents said blogging is their hobby. This figure increased since last year by 3 per cent. Increasingly more people treat blogs as the main source of income. 12 per cent said that they make their livelihood by running a blog -- it's a 4 per cent increase since last year. 11 per cent (1 per cent less since 2016) said they run a blog to be recognised as an expert.

#3 Bloggers post less

The survey also shows that the frequency of posts per week declines. Over a third (38 per cent) of respondents posted once a week. This proportion has increased 14 per cent since last year. 

#4 Most blogs are medium-sized

Most of the respondents (41 per cent) reported that their blogs received between 1,000 – 10,000 unique visitors per month. As Vuelio proved, bloggers who cited personal reasons for writing their blogs attracted fewer unique visitors, with 77 per cent stating that they attracted up to 1,000 per week, whereas bloggers citing professional reasons for writing were likely to have a larger audience.

#5 Bloggers tend to spend 5-10 hours a week blogging

With not much change since last year, most of the blogging respondents (30 per cent) said they spend 5-10 hours a week working on their blog. The largest increase (4 per cent) since last year was reported amongst bloggers spending less time (between 1-4 hours per week). What survey has also shown, there was a 5 per cent decrease in bloggers working on their sites between 11-20 hours.

The survey has also researched the time respondents spend on promoting their blogs. Most of those running their blogs for hobby (83 per cent) spent between 1-4 hours per week, whilst blogging pros were likely to have spent 30 more hours (89 per cent, up from 75 per cent since last year).

#6 Twitter and Facebook as top marketing platforms

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram remain the most preferred methods to promote content with bloggers' audience. Twitter has seen a decrease by 4 per cent since last year and was now indicated by 94 per cent respondents. Facebook's usage increased by 6 per cent, selected by 89 per cent respondents. Instagram, placed as the third most popular platform, has been used by 79 per cent surveyed. Noteworthy, Bloglovin' has been identified as a key platform by 50 per cent of bloggers and has seen a whopping 49 per cent increase since last year.

#7 Bloggers work with PR pros

One of the most interesting insights for me was the relationship of bloggers and public relations practitioners. Most surveyed bloggers (35 per cent) reported being pitched by PR pros seven or more times a week. The number of bloggers who are not pitched at all increased by 1 per cent since last year.

What's more, 70 per cent of the surveyed bloggers stated that only one pitch a week or less resulted in any content on their blog. As Vuelio revealed, those receiving the most pitches were the main top five topics covering lifestyle, parenting/family, fashion and beauty, food and travel.

One of the most interesting tables in the survey is the one below, which depicts views on blogging and public relations. 54 per cent of bloggers felt they will be more trusted than traditional journalists in the future, although this belief is not as strong as last year. For now, however, bloggers feel they lack the credibility afforded traditional journalists.

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Read the Vuelio UK Bloggers Survey 2017 in full here. Make sure to follow Vuelio on Twitter.

If you have any suggestions, would like to guest post or give me a feedback, feel free to email me at kl.marcel [at] gmail.com, tweet me @marcelkl or connect with me on LinkedIn. Thanks for stopping by, have a splendid day!