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Apr
3
A session being live-blogged and twittered by BlogHer folks is unveiling a commissioned study about women, blogs and social media. From the tweets:
“BlogHer partnered with a research company and did an awesome study of online/social media habits – revealing results now.”
“ Survey says – peeps like to blog about themselves. Older = cooking, younger = entertainment & sex/relationships.”
“36 US million women actively involved with blogs weekly”
- BlogHer wanted to do an independent, third-party market research party to join them and wanted to survey both the BlogHer population and the general population to show whether or not blogging was really moving to mainstream.
- 53% of US online women read blogs
- 85% Gen Y read blogs
Susan Wright of Compass Partners (did the survey with BlogHer)
- Saw the data that people were presenting last year, wanted to know what drives people to make the huge commitment to blogging that they do
- 5,000 participants in the survey — makes the sampling very statistically relevant
- Blind survey to the general population
- Classified people into readers (at least weekly) and publishers (weekly blogging, read/post comments frequently). Readers are a more passive participant. This is a very active form of communication for Gen X (24-41)
- 36MM women in the US are actively engaged in the blogosphere weekly (it’s gone mainstream)
- BlogHer network is way overdeveloped in the Gen X category, with over 50% of this group publishing as well as reading
- Bloggers: married/in significant relationship, have kids, 67% have completed college (Ed: note — this is WAY HIGHER than the general population — I am blown away by this statistic), 46% make more than $75k household, 45% are employed full-time
- Commitment: more than 50% of bloggers are still committed to the first blog they started. Gen X are the most loyal. Bloggers have some dissatisfaction with their blogging tools and are looking for new platforms. Elisa: There is a lot of fear about the blogosphere and how scary it is with trolls and flaming, trying to be anonymous and being outed. Less than 5% reported any of these as a reason to stop blogging. The media is hyping this a lot more than it is a real problem for people. The dissatisfaction with platform tools shows a real opportunity.
- >75% of people engaged in the blogosphere are blogging weekly or more often
- Where is the time coming from? Other forms of media: TV, newspapers, magazines. Not taking away from meeting people in person, etc. Nielson attributed a 10% drop in morning TV programming to women going to the blogosphere.
- Represents a shift: “We want what we want, when we want it.” The blogs are there 24/7.
- Favorite topic: ME
- As people get older, they tend to shift to information topics versus following people’s personal lives
- Motivation to publish: for fun, to express themselves and to connect with others like them — it’s the kitchen-table conversation, but it doesn’t have to be in your neighborhood anymore
- Readers are looking for information, and they want to stay up to date on specific topics. Publishers are more about connecting, and the readers are really using them as a resource. Because the publishers didn’t pick as their top reason to give advice, they have a very authentic voice and are viewed as being very reliable.
- Readers view publishers as being “highly” or “very” reliable
- How does that figure into purchase decisions? Results are consistent between publishers and readers. BlogHer network indexes double. People do take blogger reviews seriously.
- Elisa: Fear of a bad review — most companies are not engaging. Whether you are engaging or not, people are out there talking. When the company actually engages can be a mitigating factor in any negative reviews or chatter. You as a company have the opportunity to be part of that communication — you have the opportunity to respond.
- Passion, almost addiction (55% of those surveyed would give up alcohol before blogging, but not chocolate — only 20% would give up that)
- These numbers prove that blogging has gone mainstream.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:50 am April 3rd, 2008 in Politics
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Wow! “55% of those surveyed would give up alcohol before blogging”?
Those certainly must be the older women who are blogging about “cooking”.
you need to read the pdf of the data – it is FASCINATING!