People have been saying some interesting things about blogging recently.

On one hand, you have the usual blogging is dead reports. These are always interesting to read. It’s almost like blogging goes through a cycle of people realizing it’s a good way to increase leads, but then realize that blogging actually takes hard work.

Then instead of actually doing the work people simply dismiss blogging and say that it’s dead.

Blogging might be dead for some businesses, including those that are growing, but a new report from Hubspot still shows the power of blogging to drive low cost leads for business-to-business companies.

Blogging Drives Low Cost Leads

HubSpot recently released The 2012 State of Inbound Marketing report. It’s a great study on how inbound marketing is working for businesses heading into the 2012 and beyond.

In short, the state of pull or inbound marketing is good. Companies that have been investing in channels like blogging and content are seeing returns grow from those areas.

Push marketing still works. You can still throw up some display ads and see return. In fact, these channels are seeing growth. But when it comes to low cost leads there is only one winner and it may come as a surprise to some to learn that the lowest cost lead driver is actually blogging.

It’s a surprise probably for the folks that have not been investing in blogging and other inbound tactics like content development (video, product detail page content, etc.). These are the folks that gave up on blogging and other efforts because it was likely too much work. It’s much easier to have the digital team create an ad and have a partner serve up that ad to millions of people.

But as you can imagine, that is very expensive. It’s good for the display partners. They certainly do a great job and providing return. And I’d imagine it’s a positive return in most cases otherwise companies wouldn’t invest in those marketing channels.

Blogging on the other hand seems to have legs to be a low cost driver for companies. The folks that are investing in blogging are going to have a long-term advantage. Other companies simply do not want to pay attention to blogging. While most ignore, the few that do invest should be the winners today and tomorrow.

Those with the content will win. It goes beyond blogging, but blogging is certainly a good foundation for an overall content strategy.

Blogging has been around for a while and it seems to be something people will always want. I think it will evolve and might even change in a number of ways. As long as consumers crave information and knowledge from businesses there will be a need for bloggers. I just think the format of the blogging content will continue to change. It will include a variety of content including text, audio and visual.

The companies working in each of these areas should be set up well in the future to find success with driving quality leads.

For whatever reason, it seems that blogging is being ignored by most companies. But according to the report above maybe that is changing. Maybe companies are starting to look at investing in content.

It’s a smart play for the future.