There has been all kinds of reporting on the importance and use of blogs for personal, professional, business, marketing and public relations. The release of the State of the Blogosphere/2008 by Technorati provides drilled down details of who is blogging, why they are blogging, when blogs are being used, and how bloggers are making money with their blogs.
Technorati has been reporting annually on blogging since 2004. For the 2008 data, Technorati went beyond its own indexes and surveyed bloggers directly.
Blogging Research Agrees
The 2008 report starts by showing the results of other studies on the size and scope of the Blogosphere. According to Technorati, eMarketer reported 94.1 million blog readers in 2007, comScore MediaMatrix reported 188.9 million blog audiences and Universal McCann found that 184 million people world wide have started a blog.
Next the report tries to define what a blog is and what defines the blogosphere. It defines a blog as a web site, most often maintained by an individual, with regular entries, commentary, graphics, video, and details of events that are displayed in a reverse chronological order.
The blogosphere is defined as the “collective community of all blogs”.
Blogging Stats – Who are the Bloggers
If you work in public relations or marketing, you know how important demographics are to your planning. The Blogosphere report shows bloggers are 57 percent male, 58 percent are over the age of 35 and 74 percent have a college degree with an annual income over $75,000.
The types of blogs include:
- 79 percent of blogs are personal
- 12 percent are corporate blogs
- 46 percent are professional.
Bloggers make most of their money through advertising and pay-per-click. The findings show that 66 percent of blogs have advertising displayed.
Over 59 percent have been blogging over two years.
Blogging Topics
Topics for blogs include:
- Personal/lifestyle (54 percent)
- Technology (46 percent)
- News (42 percent)
- Computers (34 percent).
Seventy-nine percent said they blog so that they can speak their mind on topics that interest them and over 70 percent blog to share their expertise. Over 60 percent of those surveyed blog to meet and connect with like-minded people.
What Blogging Stats Mean to PR and Marketing
How can public relations and marketing professionals use this information to enhance their companies’ online presence?
These numbers represent the trend of media resources becoming more prolific online than offline. Digital news is becoming a force that needs reckoned with while efforts for print news can begin to take a back seat – all of which is a complete reversal of past practices.
There are many other ways companies can use this information for both marketing and news distribution. The best practice is to review the numbers, find where your demographics fit and start making plans to address those customers and clients that are found in the stats.
The State of the Blogosphere 2008 report can be found at technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogsphere.
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