Dave Sifry of Technorati has issued an updated “State of the Blogosphere”. Here are some interesting factoids:

• Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives
• Sophisticated spam management tools eliminate the spings and find that about 9% of new blogs are spam or machine generated
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
• Over 81 Million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day
• Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers

The growth rates are amazing. It is also interesting to see the percentage of splogs that are machine generated. Plus some new vernacular, (at least to me) “Spings”. You can read the whole thing at Sifry’s Alerts.

Since blogs are technically web sites with feeds, (ok, I’m simplifying just a bit), then there is no reason a blog cannot be effectively marketed like a web site. To this end, Stephan made a great post about optimizing this blog, pointing out some important tips that bloggers would do well to follow.

In my experience working with both search engine optimization and blog marketing, I’ve found that there are more ways to market a blog than a site without a feed. A few of the many resources to help you do this include:

RSS Button Maker – This nifty tool created by Thomas McMahon allows you to fill in your blog name, url and feed url and pick the buttons you want to create. Hit submit and it will output the code for about 20 or so RSS feed reader/aggregator RSS subscription buttons with your feed information embedded. Then all you need to do is copy and paste the code into your blog template.

A study performed by Ipsos-Insight sponsored by Yahoo (pdf) indicated that RSS feed subscription buttons or “chicklets” are the preferred way for users to subscribe to a blog’s RSS feed.

This tool also creates the code for several social bookmark services to make it easier for your readers to add your blog to del.icio.us, digg, slashdot or furl.net. Should your blog get bookmarked enough, it may make the “popular” list from one of these services and that can drive significant amounts of traffic.

RSS to Email Tools: FeedBlitz and R|mail – Sign up for these services and then place the code in the template of your blog. Visitors can opt to receive your posts via email. At first I wondered, why would anyone do that? RSS is so much more convenient. I can say from personal experience, 1/3 of the daily visitors to my own blog choose this option and we’ve had similar rates with blog marketing clients. Those are blog visitors you might not have otherwise had.

Monster Blog Directory Submission List – This list shows the “add a blog” or “add your feed” urls for over 80 different blog and RSS search engines and directories. The list gets edited monthly to add new sites or to edit urls. One of the advantages to having a blog as part of your company web site is that with a feed, you can get your site listed in these directories or search engines and a site sans feed cannot.

One thing I will note, is that blog marketing tools are only as effective as the quality of the content on the site they are being used to promote. There is no substitute for quality content and also the social networks between communities of like-minded blogs to draw traffic.

This week the search marketing conference Pubcon X was held in Las Vegas with many great sessions, one of which, RSS Feeds and Podcasting was particularly well done.  Presenters included:  Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo, Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit, Daron Babin of New Gen Media and Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR.

Presentations ranged from the how-to’s of podcasting and tools, podcast optimization, using RSS to uncover and promote hidden publisher content, industry data on podcasting and of course, Jeremy focused on Yahoo’s tools involving RSS and Podcasts.

Detailed coverage of the session can be found at: "Pubcon X – RSS Feeds and Podcasting".

A few months ago Technorati invited over 30,000 subscribers to its email newsletter to participate in a 18 question survey on blogging. There were 821 respondents.

The survey found that most bloggers blog to position themselves as an authority in their field and were fairly skeptical of corporate blogs, noting more trust in individual employee blogs.

You can view much of the raw results in tablular and graphical format on the Edelman site and some analysis on the Edelman blog. Technorati has published their own summary findings of the survey and eMarketer has published their take as well.

eMarketer is also offering a new report on business blogging:

The Business of Blogging report aggregates the latest data from Blogads,
Forrester Research, Gallup, Harris Interactive, InsightExpress, Perseus
Development, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Quris, Technorati, TNS
and many others—with eMarketer’s objective, unbiased analysis to give you the
information you need to make well-informed business decisions on the future of
online marketing.

Traditional media seems committed to sending out mixed messages about business blogging:
Fortune – No escaping the blog

Forbes – Attach of the Blogs

BusinessWeek – Blogs will Change your Business

Reports like “The Business of Blogging” seem more attractive to those looking for objective insight. But is it objective?  I have not purchased the report and if anyone else has, I would be curious about your thoughts on it.

In the spirit of a task the Blog Herald has undertaken in reviewing 100 blogs in 100 days, blogger extraordinaire and small business blogging advocate, Paul Chaney has undergone an ambitious task of reviewing 52 small business blogs in 52 weeks.

Undoubtedly, small business blogs, like small business web sites, represent a significant growth opportunity. Yet most media attention is focused on large company blogging activities. Paul’s project is a great effort at generating visibility towards small business blogs and is sure to uncover innovative and interesting blog implementations.

Paul has received quite a few "nominations" already, however he may have some open yet.  So send any small business blog examples of your own or of your small business clients to him via email.

BTW, Paul did not ask me to post this, I asked him. We’re both blogging at AllBusiness.com and I think the small biz blog review is a great project.

Yahoo has issued a new white paper on RSS. You can download the PDF but here are some key findings:

• 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.
   
• 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages without knowing it’s RSS
   
• 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.
• Even
  tech-savvy "“Aware RSS Users"” prefer to access RSS feeds via
  user-friendly, browser-based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My
  MSN).

World news and national news are preferred at 52%. More specialized content such as blogs
(23%) and podcasting (11%) are gaining. So basically, it’s mainstream media rather than niche content that gets the most use.

The primary benefit reported for use of RSS is efficient access to media sources.

Publishers
striving to syndicate their content via RSS should pay attention to how
their feeds are listed within popular RSS readers since that is the
preferred method to discover and subscribe to feeds. Publishers should
also
provide easy and prominent means for users to add RSS feeds on every
article page.

27% of Internet users subscribe and read RSS feeds without knowing being aware of RSS as a format. These "Unaware RSS Users" are
similar demographically to the average Internet user, suggesting that
RSS is not only for early adopter techies.

Today Business Week’s Blogspotting Blog mentioned that Yahoo’s director of tech development, Bradley Horowitz has said Yahoo will be launching some sort of Blog or RSS search early next week.

Back in July Steve Rubel posted about Yahoo testing RSS search and ZDNet posted in August that Yahoo was testing blog search in Korea.

The Google Blog Search feature
recently released has had mixed reviews which means an opportunity for
Yahoo to gain a leg up if indeed it’s RSS or Blog search tool really
performs.

More and more companies are contemplating whether they should start a business blog, it seems appropriate to shed more light on marketing considerations for blogs. While business blog marketing effectiveness can be improved in many ways, here are three fundamental considerations: content, frequency and distribution.

Content – Know your audience. Your blog posts must be
interesting and useful to your readers. Develop your unique voice and
don’t be afraid to post things others will not agree to.

Frequency of posts are important as there
is a direct correlation to blog popularity and frequency of posts. Post
3-5 times per week at a minimum. Consumers of information are beginning
to realize  only a fraction of sites are updated in search engines
every day, but that blog and RSS search engines like Google Blog Search, Technorati, Bloglines and Feedster are update hourly.

Distribution of your blog is important. A common issue from
people new to blogs and RSS feeds is where to find them. Marketing a
blog brings additional advantages over a traditional web site. A blog
and associated RSS/Atom feed can be promoted within the blogoshpere as
well as through traditional directories, search engines and web site
linking. The opportunity for blog exposure is much greater than a
regular web site alone. Make it easy for news feed subscribers to find
your blog through both web site search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and
RSS search engines (Google Blog Search, Bloglines, Feedster,
Technorati).

Here’s a list of search engines and directories lists and a list of Blog/Blog and RSS directories for submissions. Also, be sure to ping regularly with services like Pingomatic, Pings or Pingoat.

A list of additional blog optimization and marketing tips can be found at this recent post from Online Marketing Blog.

TechCrunch has posted an excellent list of the "Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged" giving guidelines on how to get coverage on their blog. I think it’s usefulness extends beyond that though.

Build a kick ass company
Approach Bloggers Directly
Be Persistent
Start a Blog
Be humble
Be confident
Be descriptive
Tell a Story
Don’t hide information
Don’t be a Jerk

This a great list for PR professionals as well as marketers reaching out to blogs.  In fact, it provides some compelling reasons why people in public relations doing the pithcing should have their own blog.

For bloggers that have problems with an abundance of crappy pitching by PR firms, why not publish a guideline like TechCrunch has?  It could lead to a more productive interaction for both the blogger and the person making the request.

The Nooked.com blog published the results of their Influencer study recently with 87% of respondents reporting the use of a RSS reader to keep current. 

"The Nooked – Influencer survey set out to
establish if key influencers – journalists, analysts and bloggers – are
using RSS to collect information for analysis, news & reports
and/or determine their future plans for adopting RSS as an information
gathering & tracking tool."

Respondents included 200 individuals broken down as: Journalists – 25%, Analysts – 15%, Bloggers – 45% and the remaining 15% comprised of interested parties.

While this was not exactly scientific research, it does provide yet more information in support of the notion that business RSS feeds (usually accompanied by a blog) can be effective as marketing and public relations tools.

Via Rok Hrastnik

There’s a very good article by eMarketer’s Ezra Palmer on iMedia today about harnessing the power of blogs. From reputation management to customer service, Palmer describes the opportunity companies have to connect with the slice of the population the best responds to the blog format.