Big Bad Blogs ... NOT - A report from the folks at Reveries.com

Tim Manners, editor of Cool News of the Day - a quick daily read about, you guessed it, what's cool in marketing - took on main stream media's reporting of blogs as bad news for marketers. His arsenal, a comprehensive survey that asked how we, as marketers, perceive and use blogs. A few of his findings (as summarized by Senior Reveries Editor Peter F. Eder) are reported below...

• Level of concern about bloggers as a marketer
  
  Of the 258 respondents to the question, only 12.4% (32) were very concerned, and another 26.2% (66) were a little uneasy.
  
  The largest percentage, 31.4% (81) were not very concerned, and an additional 11.2% (29) were not at all concerned. 12.4% (32) noted that they still don’t have enough information.
  
  The 18 verbatim replies to this question are illuminating, stressing a positive attitude. 15 of them noted how excited, how positive, how intrigued they are by the possibilities of using blogs. (My emphasis.)
  

• How is blogging viewed as a marketing tool?
  
  64% of the 259 respondents see blogging as having some level of importance as a marketing tool, with 18.5% (48) noting it very important. Only 9.3% (24) noted it as being unimportant.
  
  As in the previous question, more than 20% did not yet know enough about it to comment.
  

• What form of blogging is envisioned as being in the marketing toolkit?
  
  This question received only 142 responses, and of these, 28.9% (41) noted all of the above.
  
  Of the specifics noted, 24.6% (35) noted monitoring blogs on consumer opinions, and 19.7% (28) checked viral marketing on blogs. Another (9.9% (14) noted corporate blogs.
  

• What purpose is most important for marketers?
  
  Slightly more than half of the 260 respondents, 54.2% (141) noted it is most important to listen to what bloggers are saying. 4.6% (12) noted it most important to being out there as a company or brand.
  
  Another 36.2% (94) noted that both are most important.

Source: http://www.reveries.com/reverb/research/blogs/

It seems clear that saavy marketers are paying attention to blogs and that they are excited about the opportunities that blogs represent.

Technorati, the leading blog search engine, says the size of the known “blogosphere” is over 21 million blogs and counting. The total number of weblogs tracked by Technorati has doubled every five months for the past three years. With the millions of blogs populating the blogosphere it only makes sense to use this unprecedented resource to inform, engage and learn from your prospective customers or maybe your existing ones. Run a search on your own company or product on Technorati or another of the blog tracking engines. What you find may surprise you.

Thanks for reading,

tom.gray@gemsolv.com