The Decline of Company Blogs and the Rise of Strategic Leadership Newsletters – The Game Just Changed

The Fall of Company Blogs: Why SEO-Driven Content Is Losing Its Edge

Is blogging dead in 2025?

- The Decline of Company Blogs.

For decades, launching a company blog was one of the best ways to promote the business and generate new leads.

The 4 Steps Thought Leadership Blog Framework was simple:

• Build a content engine.

• Drive organic traffic.

• Get Sign-ups and/or leads.

• Get Strategic Leadership Blog Posts out there.

But in 2025, this formula is no longer working.

Blogs of all sizes & categories, like Company Blogs, are suffering traffic stagnation or decline with even some of the biggest names in B2B SaaS unable to escape the same fate.

According to Semrush, even old content empires of the past, B2B’s largest company blogs are dying – an undeniable trend.

HubSpot blog is still attracting millions of views, but at the same time hitting new lows in 2025.

HubSpot's VP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, explained that this trend is under control. On LinkedIn, he posted a publication where he explained that the landscape is changing.

The company invested early in influential marketing (The Hustle, podcasts, YouTube), and some of these channels matched and even outpaced the ROI of blogs. HubSpot pruned 30K+ blog posts which didn’t convert forcing HS to redefined its SEO strategy to stay relevant. With the introduction of AI, search optimization is being aggressively disrupted.

This is causing an increase in No-Click searches, making organic traffic more unscalable for B2B. However, thanks to AI search optimization HubSpot’s YouTube content is experiencing strong growth in AI-driven searches likeChatGPT.

Other blogs didn’t adapt like HubSpot did, which led to:

• Salesforce blog is experiencing stagnant growth, getting slightly more than 200K visits/month.

• Gong blog used to see a lot of success with thought leadership over the years, yet it’s now barely pulling 10K visits/month.

• Intercom blog is getting less than ~25K visits/month.

• Miro has more traffic than Intercom and Gong combined at 50K visits/month, but without experiencing real growth.

• Atlassian's blog is, by some miracle, getting more traffic than Salesforce’s and going up… but still, getting <400K visits/month.

A common pattern across these companies is low traffic volume and stagnant growth.

The real goal is to attract your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to convert them into users or buyers-not just get a lot of organic traffic.

If these content empires with:

• Strong brand authority.

• Sophisticated distribution Channels.

• Battle-tested content strategies

Are barely pulling 200K visits/month makes us think one single question…

If these juggernauts are struggling what does that mean for everyone else?

This forces us to reconsider whether a blog, even for a well-established company or startup, is the best growth engine or if there are any other alternatives with better ROI.

- The Role of Social Media Platforms.

Why are blogs becoming more and more irrelevant?

Well… Search isn’t what it used to be

However 80%+ of the market still runs on Google, let’s start our history lesson here.

A long time ago, there used to exist a healthy love/hating relationship between Google Search and Google Ads – one focused on helping users, the other on making money. A better search experience meant:

• Fewer clicks.

• Faster answers.

• A cleaner user experience.

Over time the balance was broken and everything slowly started to go south.

In 2023, Google trial documents revealed something that, to no one's surprise, made people feel very angry.

Google made search, bit by bit, worse over time to squeeze more and more ad revenue. They made their algorithms mess with the content distribution degrading the user search experience and driving them away.

Why Google would do that?

Well… Because the longer you scroll the more ads they can put on your screen.

- The Creator Economy and the Rise of Newsletters.

Founders and experts are switching to newsletters (free and paid) and private communities (like Discord and Slack) instead.

As Sam Ogborn (Adjunct Professor of Social Media/Content at Miami University) puts it:

We’re living in a “two-tiered internet”. The Public Web AI-generated or recycled content, indexed by Google and other search engines and the Private Web where Original insights and expert analysis, locked behind paywalls or walled-off communities (i.e., unless content is publicly available, Google can’t index it).

People like you and me, who joined Substack, have seen this shift firsthand.

In 2025, AI isn't just disrupting SEO – it is becoming the new interface for content, instantly retrieving, refining, and summarizing information from multiple sources with just a few prompts.

More and more people don’t trust companies and prefer to follow people they can connect with.

Trust in businesses has been declining and is at an all-time low, slow growth and layoffs aren’t helping either.

But what about corporate content on Google?

The nature of the content makes it very predictable, detached and rarely says anything bold. They’re fundamentally limited with 0% chances of getting hot takes.

In the past few years, new operators have been rising.

People like:

• Founders.

• Employees.

• Entrepeneurs.

• Mothers.

• Teens.

• Etc.

Have been becoming creators.

In all this period of chance and chaos, the creator economy is flourishing like never before.

While the old world, like corporate blogs, struggle to stay relevant or gain traction, indie creators are rising in places like Substack, Medium, and social platforms like:

• LinkedIn: Great for B2B marketing.

• YouTube: Great for creating a community and sharing in-depth insights.

• TikTok: Great for quick, simple content to connect with your audience.

• Facebook: Great for his powerful engine to reach new customers.

Substack’s YoY traffic is getting more than 100 million visits a month.

Substack rocks!

Some user’s publications get up to 300K+ visits per month (with each weekly post averaging 40-70K views in some instances) – that’s bigger than some of the biggest corporate blogs we talked about a few minutes ago.

But. How can it be even possible?!

I’ve been using the platform for 3 weeks, experiencing rapid growth.

Just watch what creators like Lenny Rachitsky are doing.

Lenny’s Newsletter gets as little as 4.75M visits per month - yep, you read correctly the first time. Almost 5 MILLION views, on par with HubSpot’s blog. The difference is HubSpot likely has a large content team behind those numbers, while our friend Lenny – though not a solo effort – is still significantly leaner by comparison. The fact that an independent creator can match its reach says A LOT.

- The future of newsletters.

What should companies do, then?

The content is not the one dying but blogs, especially Company blogs, are.

The key is to reorganize resources and change and adopt more effective strategies.

Get more attention via the booming creator economy.

Instead of doubling down on outdated channels companies need to realize that they should put more resources where their audience's attention is - the creator economy.

Channels like newsletters, social posts, or podcasts from creators who have built active and engaged communities are the new way to reach your target audience.

Here’s a good strategy:

Instead of paying an editor a salary of $100k, you can invest that money on 20 sponsorships at $5k for each post with a viewership of ~50K views.

With this strategy alone you just got over 1 million views - more than Salesforce blogs can generate annually.

Now, you’re using multiple high-traffic channels, gaining more reach for less effort, and increasing your chances of attracting new customers to your business.

You must invest in other organic channels like YouTube, which is booming right now. If you’re not there you’re missing out on a massive opportunity.

Same story for podcasts and online communities. Your highest priority should be the diversification of your organic strategy beyond just static content.

Expand into dynamic, high-engagement platforms where your prospects are actively interacting and spending their time.

Create high-value content, not summary blogs.

Instead, you should invest your efforts into content that is hyper-specific to you as a company. Even if these can still be aggregated by AI, this content is essential:

• Product docs & knowledge bases – Users still need high-quality product education and documentation

• Landing pages & case studies – Content that helps with conversion and decision-making.

• User-Generated Content (UGC) – I’m a big fan of UGC (if you can’t already tell). Not only do you feature real users and their work, it’s a growth loop.

Maybe the word “blog” in general needs to go.

Is investing in a blog still worth it?

While Company blogs are not disappearing tomorrow they are still losing a lot of relevance and their strategic role as content engines is rapidly shrinking. The old playbook of creating ever-green blog posts for SEO might not be enough anymore.

In today’s rapidly evolving market, it’s recommended to reevaluate if the blog is truly a necessary investment or just another checkbox for companies to keep ticking out of habit.

The brands that adopt newsletters, social media, and private communities will outflank the traditional corporate giants considered by many to big to fall.

Are you ready to adapt?

Are you a founder who understands the power of Substack and newsletters but needs a skilled ghostwriter to craft compelling Strategic Leadership content? Let's connect and discuss how I can help you elevate your brand and engage your audience.