A new study called The Paradox of Blogging and Content Marketing by Percussion Software reveals some interesting information about companies, blogging, and missed content marketing opportunities. According to the research report, only 1 in 5 mid-market technology companies surveyed have company blogs. It gets worse. Of those companies that have company blogs, 1 out of 4 don't blog actively and haven't published content in any form on their company blogs within the last 30 days.As Theresa Cramer of EContent explains, it might seem like everyone is blogging, but in reality, that's far from accurate. She says, "While many companies know blogging is an important marketing tool, they just aren't on board."Content marketing presents a huge opportunity to connect with consumers, tell a brand's story, and boost search engine traffic to a company website. So why are so few of the over 800 mid-market technology companies surveyed in this study not blogging? According to Percussion Software, the barrier isn't the size of the company or the depth of the team. Those are certainly contributing factors, but the predominant factor is the company philosophy.Of the surveyed technology companies, software companies are most likely to be blogging (42.8%), and of all companies that maintain blogs, WordPress is by far the most popular application to do it. It's important to point out that a disinterest in blogging doesn't mean that these technology companies aren't active on the social web at all. Many have dropped blogging down the list of priorities in favor of other social media and mobile activities.One of the things I talk about extensively in Content Marketing for Dummies is the importance of surrounding consumers with branded content so they can self-select how they want to engage with your brand. Not everyone likes Twitter, and not everyone likes Facebook. Content marketing (including authoritative blog posts) should be a catalyst to social media sharing and conversations. By leaving blogging out of the social media and content marketing plan entirely, a company is missing a huge opportunity to connect with consumers with deeply meaningful, shareable, and value-added content. You can bet that's a missed opportunity that competitors are more than happy to leverage.