FACT: People are still writing blogs. Despite suggestions that blogs are passé, it seems that more and more people are still writing blog content now more than ever. Blogging remains as an important avenue for consumer expression.
Consumer generated blogs have been showing significant growth since 2006 when NM Incite began tracking them according to a published U.S. Digital Consumer Report State of the Media(Q3-Q4 2011) report.
At the end of 2011, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, tracked over 181 million blogs around the world. This was way up from the sparse 36 million reported only five years earlier in 2006.
In a report from NM Incite, the big three blogging platforms are Blogger (from Google), WordPress and Tumbler (in that order). These three sites received 80.5 unique visitors in October of 2011. The report did not separate readers from writers.
It is estimated that the number of blog readers in the USA would reach approximately 122.6 million viewers accounting for about 53.5% of all internet users.
It’s difficult to compare eMarketer’s audience of 122.6 million U.S. readers to Nielsen’s 181 million global blogs, but one can reasonably ask whether there are almost as many writers as readers.
Jason Mudd, president of Axia Public Relations, thinks blogs are too difficult to keep up with.
"People can swallow small bites of information from Twitter and Facebook much easier without having to read several paragraphs," says Mudd, whose clients include Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Verizon and Synovus.
Mudd does follow some bloggers, but he does it through Twitter or Facebook, scanning the headlines they post and only occasionally clicking through to the actual blog.
Though individual blogs do not have a large audience per se, they effectively add a combined reach for marketing campaigns. Women bloggers make for a large portion of the targeted audience for advertisers (especially CPG companies – Consumer packaged goods).
- 70% are college educated (with a majority earning a degree)
- 1 in 3 are mothers.
- 52% of bloggers are parents with kids under 18 in the household.
One only has to look to the emergence of Pinterest which had over 4.5 million unique visitors in October 2011, which was up 37 times higher than from the beginning of the year.
Data from Google Ad Planner and Ignite Social Media, 60-second Marketer found that these users fell between the age groups of 25-34, 45-54 & 55-64, with 80% being female!
The data collected also found that:
- 92% of Pinterest’s audience also visited mass-merchandiser sites as well.
- 36% of women are also more likely to trust ads on social media over the 26% of men.
So what can you take away from this post? Keep blogging and try gearing your blogs and link building efforts knowing that women bloggers and Pinterest account for a huge portion of your target audience. Pinterest may just be the latest Internet fad but it is one that should not be ignored. Remember that Facebook was also considered a "fad" when starting out.