How Bloggers Blog to Build Businesses

The recently released State of the Blogosphere feature from Technorati shows the constitution of the contemporary blogger population, as well as some basic features of same. With a series of articles spread over five days, the framework was charitably condensed by our dear eMarketer.

While our recent coverage analyzes bloggers’ relationship with traditional media, these writers are different from traditional journalists in important ways. Primarily, most do not make money from their self-publishing activities, but find other ways to create value.

Bloggers worldwide write about brands (46 percent), products and their experiences (38 percent), and to a lesser extent about company information and gossip (eighteen percent). But more specifically, behavior differed significantly between hobbyist, part-time, self-employed and corporate bloggers.

Within the different types surveyed, brands and product reviews were more often written by part-time bloggers. Everyday experiences in stores or with customer service was written by 41 percent part-timers, forty percent by the self-employed, followed by 38 percent of hobbyists and only 25 percent of corporate bloggers. Company information and gossip was written by 32 percent of the self-employed, more than any other group.

Since so few of those surveyed make their full living from their blog, other avenues must make this worth a writer’s time. Because of their blog, 71 percent of all groups responded that they have “much greater visibility in my industry because of my blog.” 63 percent say that prospective clients read their blog and purchased products or services.

Other ways that blogs have improved their businesses:

• blog has helped my company be regarded as a thought leader within our industry - 56 percent
• industry conference speaker invitations - 36 percent
• blog as company recruiting tool - 18 percent

Only thirteen percent of all respondents said that their blog has not had any impact on their business yet.

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