Are you blogging? Technorati‘s 2013 Digital Influence Report (the report formerly known as the State of the Blogosphere) suggests you should be. (Sorry, the link is no longer live.)

“Blogs are still one of the most influential mediums, ranking high with consumers for trust, popularity and influence,” the report says.

The report surveyed more than 6,000 “influencers,” 1,200 consumers and 150 top brand marketers. It determined who was an influencer using rankings from web measurement companies like comScore and Nielsen, number of Twitter followers and Facebook friends and potential to draw “likes.”

The report includes lots of details about how companies are measuring success and where they plan to spend more money (mobile, social advertising and video are big). But a couple of things I found interesting for small businesses without a big marketing budget:

• Blogs are the third-most influential digital resource (31%) for consumers looking to make a purchase, behind retail sites (56%) and brand sites (34%).
• Facebook and Twitter generate most blog referrals and shares.

Social media likewise gets credit from inbound marketers HubSpot for earning a company traffic and business leads. Inbound marketing is described by Dev Basu in a Globe and Mail article as “getting found by customers rather than pushing messages out to them.”

When you run HubSpot’s free and helpful Marketing Grader report on your own website, it shares some interesting statistics and comments (along with what you’re doing well and not so well):

• Companies who create, optimize and promote their blogs get 55% more traffic and 70% more leads than those who don’t.
• Blog posts that were shared on Twitter had 113% more inbound links than those not shared on social media at all.
• Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links than those that don’t.
• The more sites that link to you, the better you will rank. “Every link to your site is another vote in the giant popularity contest that is the internet.”
• Creating great content is key to getting inbound links.
• The list of “authoritative” pages linked to me revealed that commenting on blog posts is another way of getting inbound links. Okay, make that commenting on an influencer’s blog posts. 🙂

Overall, HubSpot says, “Blogging is a great way to add interesting content to your site so you can get more traffic and leads.” Then don’t forget to tweet and promote your post on social media!