This February 2004 study from Pew Research Center finds that, as of a summer 2003 survey, some 2% of the online U.S. population blogs. The study also notes that early data from 2004 indicates that figure may have gone up to as much as 7% of the population. According to my analysis, as laid out in greater detail in an article I wrote for iMedia, that 2% and 7% works out respectively to 2.5 million to 8.8 million people, based on Pew’s Deceber 2003 estimate of 126 million U.S. adults online.

The report looks at a range of people’s online activities, but if you prefer, you can skip right to the section on weblogs.

This is a December 2003 survey of 610 bloggers, the results of which include the following:

• 53% of respondents blog at least once a day (which surprises me)
• 48% blog both at home and at work
• 44% have more than one blog
• 13% feature advertising
• Only 9% have every been approached by a company to include a mention of them on their blog

There’s a fair bit more to this survey, so take a look.

BlogSearchEngine.com: Survey of Bloggers

Olivier Travers

Olivier is one smart guy. A friend and colleague, he’s one of the smarter bloggers out there commenting on technology and e-business issues. This is a relatively new URL for him. Previously, he had been blogging at WebVoice.Blogspot.com, which he recently gave up in favor of this new domain, and I see the old one is already some piano blog (I’d add it to this site’s index, but it’s not clear what business, if any, it supports).

Olivier makes his living as a strategic consultant. He also blogs in almost as many places as I do. He is a the main blogger behind TheEndofFree.com, about the trend towards user-paid content online, as well as a co-founder, along with myself among others, of MarketingWonk. In addition, he blogs at Lockergnome’s RSS site, and elsewhere, no doubt.

Link

Great article from NY Post (of all places) on the business blog phenomenon. It reads, in part:

While Microsoft says the site [Channel 9] is about “building community,” it also serves another purpose – getting the company’s point of view out without relying on the media.

“It’s using blogging to manage the message,” said Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research. “It has an insider-y feel, but the fact is these guys are evangelists. It’s more of a marketing tool than anything else.”

More and more, corporations are turning to blogs as a way to reach their customers without relying on television or newspapers. Unlike news releases, blogs create a personal connection with employees, with a relaxed tone and the ability for readers to ask questions.

Macromedia, IBM and other technology companies let their employees blog about new products, the corporate environment, even hiring practices. But they also debunk rumors, counter magazine stories and promote their companies.

Thanks to Olivier Travers for the tip.

NY Post: Company Blogs Aim for Newspaper End Run

I’m delighted to see MarketingSherpa is reselling this report. I am its co-author and primary analyst, written originally for MarketingWonk, which did not do the greatest job of promoting the report. Leave it to MarketingSherpa, though, to market it right, as they are experts at report sales.

MarketingSherpa’s sales copy includes this:

Business Blogs sidesteps gee whiz hype to focus on practical realities. You’ll learn:

• How 45 companies in a wide array of industries (including both B-to-B and B-to-C) are using Blogs today for marketing, customer relationship building, PR, and corporate communications.
• Specific tactics to get readers for your Blog (with more than one million blogs out there, getting attention is your biggest challenge.) Includes 17-best online resources, and quick tips on syndication.
• How and where to advertise on third party Blogs if you want to take advantage of the Blog phenomenon without building your own. (Note: Response rates are currently more than double the average online ad click rate.)
• Basics on creating a Blog – including writing-style, best updating frequency, recommended technology, and legal advice. (Who owns copyright on comments visitors post to your Blog? Find out.)

The report costs $99 and is worth every penny, if I do say so myself!

MarketingSherpa: Business Blogs: How Successful Companies Get Real Results With Weblogs

Red Hat, vendors of commercial Linux services, staged a worldwide customer outreach tour in early 2004, and supported it with this blog about the behind-the-scenes activities of the tour. During the tour, the blog was averaging more than 3,500 visits a day. MarketingSherpa has a great case study about this event and blog.

Link

A great case study from MarketingSherpa (what else would you expect from those gals?) on how Red Hat, the commercial Linux experts, combined the power of a blog, a worldwide customer tour and MeetUp to achieve fantastic outreach for “1/5th the price of a trade show.” An excerpt:

A big part of Red Hat’s brand is that it’s an open source company. [Chris] Grams [Senior Manager, Marketing Communications, at Red Hat] took that to mean that communications should be as open, honest, and even human as possible, rather than “corporate-sounding.”

“I want to give people the sense that Red Hat is made up of real people. You’re not talking to a building, you’re talking to an individual, and some pretty darn smart individuals at that. We’re proud of that.

“I really believe if you talk in a real person’s voice, you reach people in such a deeper way. We try not to make the message so watered down and so enterprise antiseptic that it appeals to no one. We may make at least a couple of people mad, but I’m hoping an enormous number of people feel a deeper connection.”

The blog averaged 3,000-5,000 readers per day during the tour. A link to Red Hat’s blog here.

MarketingSherpa: How to Use a Back-stage Blog & Virtual Community Networking to Maximize Your Road Show’s Impact

This site uses blogs as a marketing vehicle with a clever twist on the sweepstakes model. The basic idea is that marketers offer up some of their products as a prize for a sweepstake, which Blogstakes encourages blogs to promote. The hook, however, is that both a random visitor from one of the blogs and the referring blogger both with the prize. That is, Blogstakes tracks where the click-throughs to its site come from, and they give a prize also to the blogger from whose site the randomly drawn winner clicked. Because bloggers have some skin in the game, the site has been popular with bloggers who link to it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I was the winning blogger of one of the first contests, for Clip-n-Seal. I had written on MarketingVox about the launch of Blogstakes, and based on that post, I referred the winning entrant to the contest. I also received a sample package of Clip-n-Seal’s product, a clever device to seal open bags with, and I have to say, it is a terrific project. I think this marks the second time in my life that I won any such contest (once, when I was around 25, I won a CD in a radio call-in drawing, the first CD in my collection!).

Link

Clip-n-Seal is an innovative consumer product, a plastic rod and clamp device, in various sizes, that seals bags securely. The company behind it has embraced blogs whole-heartedly. Not only do they maintain their own blog, under the News section of the site, which is a mix of customer news, marketing initiatives, PR coverage and other miscellaneous customer information, but they also have embraced blogs as a marketing outlet. Notably, they were one of the first advertisers for Blogstakes, a sweepstake program that drafts other bloggers in its promotions, which, they attest, was very successful for them in raising their awareness around the Net and lifting their Google rank.

In a recent post, founder D.L. Byron describes what it’s like to get BoingBoinged (we can only imagine).

Link

Brian Lehrer

I live in NYC and listen slavishly to our local NPR affiliate station, WNYC. From 10am to noon, Brian Lehrer hosts one of the most erudite shows on talk radio. I’m delighted to see he’s just started a blog. Of course, I proposed he should do this a year and a half ago. Now he’s just got to pave the way for his colleague Leonard Lopate, the other most eruidte talk show host on the radio.

Link

Alan Meckler, CEO of Internet research and publishing firm Jupiter Media, has embraced blogs in a big way. Not only has he encouraged many of his firm’s analysts to maintain their own blogs, but he also blogs himself about general trends in the Internet and high-tech industry.

Link

ClickZ’s editor Rebecca Lieb reports on the recent news that the popular humor and tech blog Boing Boing is too popular for its own good. Boing Boing’s found Mark Frauenfelder, a former editor at Wired, recently appealed to readers for ideas on how Boing Boing can generate revenue, at least enough to cover its ballooning hosting costs, as the blog’s ever-growing popularity is driving the site towards $2,000 a month in bandwidth fees.

Hundreds of readers have shared their ideas. I contributed mine, too, which I posted to my ExecutiveSummary.com site, namely a combination of micropayments, recommended donations and BlogAds.

Lieb notes that Boing Boing has recruited John Battelle to help manage the situation, the former founding editor of Wired and publisher of the late, great Industry Standard magazine. Battelle describes his role with Boing Boing’s four writers, “I’m Reuben, they’re the Partridge Family.”

The ClickZ article also notes that Battelle, if he takes the mantle of publisher, will be following in the lead of Jason Calacanis, Nick Denton and Tony Perkins when it comes to commercial blog entrepreurism.

ClickZ: Boing Boing Plus Battelle Equals Blogs as Big Business?

Wired was a bit slow to join the blogging trend, but it shows signs of rolling out several, with a landing page for all wired blogs (link above). The first two blogs list are:

• Beyond the Beyond from legendary cyberpunk science fiction writer Bruce Sterling
• Cult of Mac by Wired writer and Macintosh junkie Leander Kahney

Link

Scott Neal

Scott Neal, “your friendly City Manager for the City of Eden Prairie, MN,” explains:

I use this weblog to keep Council members, staff, and interested citizens informally updated on a variety of community-related stuff that’s crossing my desk and my mind.

Link

Bar and restaurant blog.

Link

Kennesaw State University’s Public Journalism Network. From the organization’s charter statement:

The Public Journalism Network is a global professional association of journalists and educators interested in exploring and strengthening the relationship between journalism and democracy.
We believe journalism and democracy work best when news, information and ideas flow freely; when news fairly portrays the full range and variety of life and culture of all communities; when public deliberation is encouraged and amplified; and when news helps people function as political actors and not just as political consumers.

Link

Blog by the president of Citizens League, which a public policy advocacy and lobbying group in Minnesota:

The Citizens League promotes the public interest in Minnesota by involving citizens in identifying and framing critical public policy choices, forging recommendations and advocating their adoption.

Link

Consulting firm focused on helping organize in-person auctions.

Link

Blog to support Collaxa, a web services publishing platform.

Link

You can’t get a lot more CPG than milk. Well going hog wild, as it were, this environmentally conscious organic dairy has no less than five “Blog ‘Cow’munities!” (their pathetic joke, not mine):

• Strong Women Daily News
  The latest news and insights from our Strong Women partners

• The Bovine Bugle
  Daily moos from the Howmars Organic Dairy Farm

• The Dairy Planet
  Daily ways we try to nurture and sustain the environment

• The Daily Scoop
  Moos from inside the Yogurt Works

• Creating Healthy Kids
  Daily updates from our Menu for Change healthy food in schools program

UPDATE: On June 7, the company put out this press release, calling attention to their blog initiative, quoting yours truly as an expert in the space.

Link