What did Elena Verna say about company blogs?
That the big B2B company blogs have stopped growing, so the old content-engine playbook no longer pays. Elena Verna, who writes the newsletter Elena's Growth Scoop and was introduced on Lenny's Newsletter in December 2025 as head of growth at Lovable, published Company blogs are no longer worth the investment on 6 March 2025. The post describes the formula companies followed for years (build a content engine, drive organic traffic, get sign-ups and leads) and says that playbook isn't working anymore.
The public part of the post uses Semrush traffic estimates, and Verna notes the exact numbers may vary while the trend holds:
- HubSpot's blog was still pulling in millions of visits, but its 2025 traffic was hitting new lows.
- Salesforce's blog was stagnant, at just over 200,000 visits a month.
- Verna's own newsletter, the post's subtitle suggests, gets more monthly views than the Salesforce blog.
The rest of the post, including its section on Gong's blog, is for paid subscribers, so we summarise only the part anyone can read.
Verna's earlier public post, The Future of SEO is User-Generated Content (27 September 2024), sets out related reasoning. AI is good at giving the most common answers, so general SEO content built on widely known knowledge is being cannibalised, and using AI to write that content, Verna added, only shows there's no differentiation. Verna's answer was content made by users: template galleries such as Canva's, Notion's and Miro's, with each template on its own page. Verna also warned that this takes 1 to 2 years and thousands of user-made pieces to pay off.
What did Verna say about organic marketing on Lenny's Podcast?
That organic marketing now means social, even in B2B. In the Lenny's Podcast episode published on 18 December 2025 (also on YouTube), host Lenny Rachitsky asked Verna about marketing's role in growth. Verna said that five years ago the answer on organic strategy would have been SEO, then, at about 29:58 in the episode's automatic transcript: "If you ask me what's your organic marketing strategy right now, to me it's all about social."
Verna went on to say this applies however B2B you are, because that is where people's attention is, and said X and LinkedIn work well for founder and employee posts, especially in B2B. Verna also warned against letting ChatGPT write your posts without showing any personality. At the start of the episode, Verna named building in public through employee and founder posts, and giving the product away, as two of Lovable's biggest growth strategies.
Our reading of the three public pieces together: generic search content is losing ground to AI answers, and the growth Verna describes comes from user content, the product itself and people posting in their own voice.
Did HubSpot really prune 30,000 blog pages?
Yes, by HubSpot's own account. Kieran Flanagan, whom Verna's post describes as VP of Marketing at HubSpot, wrote in a LinkedIn post on 30 January 2025: "We've pruned over 30k blog pages for content that doesn't convert." The post opened by asking whether HubSpot had really lost 80% of its organic traffic, and gave five points in reply:
| Topic | Flanagan's point, in our summary |
|---|---|
| Influence | HubSpot began investing in influence channels four years earlier: it bought The Hustle and launched a podcast network, a creator programme and YouTube channels. Those channels now generate demand equivalent to its blogs and are growing faster. |
| Fit | HubSpot judges channels on ROI and LTV:CAC, pruned the 30k+ pages, and built a custom fit model into all its marketing, including content. AI lets every brand publish informational content at scale, and Google wants more relevance. |
| No-click searches | No-click searches are growing because of AI, which will make organic traffic harder to scale for B2B companies. |
| AI search | HubSpot saw large jumps in views for its YouTube videos that surface in ChatGPT search. |
| The numbers | The traffic numbers being shared weren't accurate, though the trend was. HubSpot still gets a lot of organic traffic, and it keeps growing for transactional keywords. |
So the HubSpot story is narrower than the headline version. HubSpot cut pages that didn't convert, kept its blog, still grows organic traffic on transactional searches, and had spent four years on influence channels such as The Hustle, podcasts and YouTube.
Where we agree with Verna
On three points. These are our opinions, based on the sources above.
- A blog run for traffic on generic questions is a poor bet for a small B2B team. Verna's 2024 point about AI giving the most common answers fits the wider data: SparkToro's June 2026 study found 68% of US Google searches ended without a click from January to April 2026.
- Traffic is the wrong scoreboard. HubSpot pruned pages by whether they converted. Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, makes a similar case in the same study, advising marketers to replace traffic as a KPI.
- B2B attention is on social, and people beat logos there. We think a founder posting on LinkedIn or X reaches buyers sooner than a new company blog can rank.
Where we disagree
On what a small team should do instead, and on whether long-form writing has lost its use. Again, these are our opinions.
- The alternatives assume scale. A user-content gallery needs thousands of pieces and 1 to 2 years, by Verna's own estimate. HubSpot's influence push included buying The Hustle. A three-person team can do neither.
- A post on your own site is still the citable home for an idea. In a post on 25 May 2026, Fishkin argued for shifting effort from content on your own site to marketing on the platforms where your audience is, yet still gave five reasons to publish: to influence search engines and AI tools, to give an idea a home that can be cited and quoted, to give the most loyal readers the full version, to distribute by email, and to think at a length social posts don't allow. Fishkin expected that post to get fewer than 5,000 visits, fewer than 500 of them from search.
- Verna's own newsletter is long-form writing with owned distribution. In a post on 28 July 2026, Verna wrote that it began about two years after starting to post on LinkedIn, partly to own distribution as social platforms locked theirs down, and that it is almost at 100,000 Substack subscribers. A company blog can work the same way if it carries a real person's point of view and goes out by email.
- Sales needs something to send. After a call, a dated post that answers the buyer's exact question does a job a feed post can't.
What is a company blog still worth for a small B2B team?
Less as a traffic source and more as a library of answers you can point people to. This table is our view of which posts to keep, built from the sources above.
| Post type | Our call | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Generic what-is explainers | Cut or merge | AI gives the common answer well, as Verna argued in 2024 |
| Posts with no leads, sign-ups or sales use in 12 months | Prune, merge or update | HubSpot pruned pages that didn't convert |
| Research posts with dated, linked sources | Keep and update | A citable home for an idea, one of Fishkin's reasons to publish, and something sales can send |
| Comparison and pricing pages | Keep | Fishkin lists high-intent transactional queries among those SEO still serves, and Flanagan says HubSpot's transactional traffic still grows |
| Founder essays with a point of view | Keep; post the short version on LinkedIn first | Verna's newsletter, one person's long-form writing, had almost 100,000 Substack subscribers by July 2026, by Verna's count |
If you have no marketer, our guide to marketing without a marketing team shows how to fit this into a weekly routine.
Our position, and how to test your own blog
Our position: for a small team, a blog is worth keeping as a set of research-based posts with dated sources, written to be cited and sent. This post shows the standard: each claim comes from a source we link, each source in the list has a publication date or the date we checked it, and where a source is paywalled, as Verna's March 2025 post is, we say so and summarise only the public part. A separate fact-check re-opens every source.
If you want to run the same test on your own blog, these steps are our suggestion:
Export a year of page data
In Google Search Console, export clicks and impressions by page for the last 12 months.
Mark the pages that did a job
Flag any page that brought a lead or sign-up, or that your sales team sends to prospects. Everything else is a pruning candidate, as at HubSpot.
Merge, update or remove the rest
Fold thin posts into a stronger one on the same topic and redirect the old address. Update numbers and add dates to the posts you keep.
Test new ideas on LinkedIn first
Post the short version and write the long one only if buyers reply. Our guide to LinkedIn personal branding for founders covers a 30-minute weekly routine.
Research before you write the long version
Check what already ranks and what people ask. Siela's SEO Blog Writer checks search volume, cost per click, the top 10 Google results and People Also Ask, writes an outline you approve, then drafts each section and saves the draft to notes. It does not publish.
Frequently asked questions
Are company blogs still worth it in 2026?
In our view, a blog built to win traffic on generic questions is not worth it for a small B2B team, because AI answers and zero-click searches absorb much of that traffic. A smaller set of dated, research-based posts, comparison pages and founder essays still earns its place, because buyers and salespeople can cite and send them.
What did Elena Verna say about company blogs?
In a post on 6 March 2025, Elena Verna argued that company blogs are no longer worth the investment. Using Semrush estimates, Verna showed HubSpot's blog traffic hitting new lows in 2025 and Salesforce's blog stagnant at just over 200,000 visits a month. The rest of the post, from its section on Gong's blog onward, is for paid subscribers.
Did HubSpot delete 30,000 blog pages?
Kieran Flanagan of HubSpot wrote on LinkedIn on 30 January 2025 that HubSpot had pruned over 30k blog pages for content that doesn't convert. Flanagan also wrote that the traffic numbers being shared weren't accurate, though the trend was, and that HubSpot's organic traffic was still growing for transactional keywords.
Why did Elena Verna start a newsletter if company blogs aren't worth it?
Verna wrote in July 2026 that the newsletter started about two years after posting on LinkedIn, when readers kept asking where the longer insights lived, and partly to own distribution as social platforms locked theirs down. It is a person's long-form writing sent by email, which is different from a company blog run for search traffic.
What did Elena Verna say about SEO and user-generated content?
In September 2024, Verna wrote that AI is good at giving the most common answers, so general SEO content is being cannibalised, and that future SEO would be anchored on user-generated content such as template galleries. Verna cited Canva, Notion, Miro, Figma and Amplitude and warned that it takes 1 to 2 years and thousands of pieces to work.
What should a small B2B team publish instead of a traffic blog?
Our suggestion: research posts with dated, linked sources, comparison and pricing pages, and founder essays tested first as short LinkedIn posts. Prune or merge posts that brought no leads, sign-ups or sales use in 12 months, a test similar to the one HubSpot applied when it cut pages that didn't convert.
Sources
- Elena Verna: Company blogs are no longer worth the investment (public preview; rest for paid subscribers) (published 6 Mar 2025)
- Elena Verna: The Future of SEO is User-Generated Content (published 27 Sep 2024)
- Elena Verna: So, you want to be a content creator? (published 28 Jul 2026)
- Lenny's Newsletter: The new AI growth playbook for 2026 (Lenny Rachitsky with Elena Verna), episode page and transcript (published 18 Dec 2025)
- Lenny's Podcast on YouTube: The new AI growth playbook for 2026 (checked 20 Oct 2026)
- Kieran Flanagan on LinkedIn: Did HubSpot really lose 80% of its organic traffic? (published 30 Jan 2025)
- SparkToro: Inimitable Product is the New "Make Great Content" (Rand Fishkin) (published 25 May 2026)
- Internet Archive copy of Inimitable Product, used because the live page blocked automated access on 20 Oct 2026 (archived 28 Sep 2026)
- SparkToro: In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click (Rand Fishkin) (published 8 Jun 2026)
- Internet Archive copy of the 2026 study (archived 13 Oct 2026)