Let's Look at The Numbers
Why should anyone in marketing care about blogs, RSS feeds, and Wikis...?
I see four main reasons why marketers who don' t care are missing an opportunity:
1) A large and increasing number of people are involved in the blog community. Some are just readers of blogs or wikis (knowingly or not actually), some subscribe to RSS feeds and some get more involved by actually becoming part of the community and actually publishing their own.
2) A large and increasing amount of content is getting published and consumed. That content is typically organized by topic or center of interest. That content is also in general not yet saturated by advertising messages. It is actually perceived by some as more independent and spontaneous than the regular media or corporate websites and therefore more credible
3) The profile of the blog community member is also attractive. Blog readers and writers still tend to display the profile of technology "pioneers".
4) Few marketers have made the jump yet. As usual, some aspects of blog marketing can be perceived as being risky, the rules are not yet well defined, the facilitators are not yet in place, the results are not yet proven. But in exchange for these challenges, the opportunity to be unique and to be heard exist. After all, it is not every day that marketer can pioneer and explore new techniques themselves!
I see four main reasons why marketers who don' t care are missing an opportunity:
1) A large and increasing number of people are involved in the blog community. Some are just readers of blogs or wikis (knowingly or not actually), some subscribe to RSS feeds and some get more involved by actually becoming part of the community and actually publishing their own.
2) A large and increasing amount of content is getting published and consumed. That content is typically organized by topic or center of interest. That content is also in general not yet saturated by advertising messages. It is actually perceived by some as more independent and spontaneous than the regular media or corporate websites and therefore more credible
3) The profile of the blog community member is also attractive. Blog readers and writers still tend to display the profile of technology "pioneers".
4) Few marketers have made the jump yet. As usual, some aspects of blog marketing can be perceived as being risky, the rules are not yet well defined, the facilitators are not yet in place, the results are not yet proven. But in exchange for these challenges, the opportunity to be unique and to be heard exist. After all, it is not every day that marketer can pioneer and explore new techniques themselves!
A recent report from The Pew Internet and American Life Project [http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_blogging_data.pdf] is providing some interesting statistics:
- Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004
- 27 % of online U.S. adults read blogs (this means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers)
- 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators
- 7 % write blogs (that represent 8 million people)
- 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is .
- Men: 57% are male
- Young: 48% are under age 30
- Broadband users: 70% have broadband at home
- Internet veterans: 82% have been online for six years or more
- Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000
- Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees
Blog readers are somewhat more of a mainstream group than bloggers themselves. Like bloggers, blog readers are more likely to be young, male, well educated, internet veterans.
Another good source of statistics about the blogosphere is Blogcount [http://dijest.com/bc/]. This blog collects and organizes the best reports and analyses on this subject.
posted by Francois Lavaste at 9:28 AM
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