A report from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research found that blog content marketing is increasingly popular among Fortune 500 companies.

While the gains have been modest, 23 percent of Fortune 500 companies use blog content marketing to reach customers and prospects compared to 16 percent in 2008, according to a study from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research.

Developing engaging blog content can help companies improve their accessibility to potential prospects, essentially giving them a better understanding of a business. Moreover, the potential SEO benefit even from an informal blog post is massive. Regularly updating pages will increase cached pages and improve a website’s standing on Google SERPs.

Since 2010, the amount of Fortune 500 companies blogging has remained stagnant, but those using blogs have seen improved engagement and outreach, according to the study.

The study included blogging in its overall analysis of social media marketing campaigns. It’s likely that blogs and other forms of social content will become more popular moving forward with 86 percent of companies saying that social is “very important” or “somewhat important” for their organization moving forward.

Brafton recently reported that a new addition to Google’s algorithm will reward websites based on the overall freshness of their website and content. Developing original blog posts can help sites improve their rank.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.