The State of the Blogosphere

Demographics

• Two-thirds are male

• 60% are 18-44

• The majority are more affluent and educated than the general population

• 75% have college degrees

• 40% have graduate degrees

Why Do Bloggers Blog?

• Technorati asked quite simply, “Why do you blog?” Not surprisingly, 71% say they blog in order to speak their minds.  Part-timers, on the other hand, are driven by sharing their expertise (72%) and also supplementing their income (61%). What came as a revelation to Technorati is the repsonse that Pros were less interested in supplementing their income (17%), instead attracting new clients for the businesses they work for (53%) proved pervasive. Entrepreneurs were also most interested in attracting new clients (72%).

Brand Presence in Blogs

Brand Presence

• 46% of bloggers post about the brands they love or hate,

• 38% post brand or product reviews.

• Part-Time and Self-Employed bloggers refer to brands at a much higher rate (80%), with one in three posting reviews at least once a week.

Blog Topics

• When reviewing the topics that bloggers most often discuss, politics, business, technology and personal musings ranked supreme.

Company Blogs

• 71% of respondents who maintain blogs for a business reported an increase in visibility within their industries as a result of blogging.

• 56% claim that their blogs helped their company establish as a thought leadership position within the industry.

TÜRKİYE’DE BLOG• Türkiye’ de Blog Yazarlığı Araştırması Raporu Özeti;• 1417 blog sahibi 717 blogcu ile 01 Aralık 2008 – 15 Ocak 2009 tarihleri arasında

yapıldı.• %70‘i 20 ile 30 yaş arasında • %68′i erkek. • %35′i ünivesite mezunu, %33′ü üniversite öğrencisi. %11′i  lise öğrencisi. %82 si lise

ve üzeri düzeyinde eğitim almış • %70 oranında kişisel konularda yazıyorlar. Sırasıyla  “İnternet %52 ” , “teknoloji %41”

ve “müzik %32” • %47’si günlük 100 ve daha az ziyaretçiye sahip. • %41 i günde 2 -10 arası yorum alıyorlar • %36’sı günde yarım saat ile bir saat arası başkalarının bloglarını okuyarak geçiriyor. • %37’si günde bir saat veya daha az televizyon izliyor, gazete okuyor. • %23′ü bloglardaki bilgilerin doğruluğuna 100 üzerinden 70 puan veriyor. • %17’si bloglarda tanıtılan bir ürün hakkındaki yorumlara 100 üzerinden 70 veriyor. • %69’u blog yazarlığından bir gelir elde etmiyor. • %46’sı Google Adsense reklam networkune üye. • %49′u Açık kaynak kodlu  Wordpress Yazılımını kullanıyor.

• The future of blogging is expected to affect the same top three industries, politics, technology, and business,

Enthusiasts

Enthusiasts are vast and tantalizing opportunity for marketers.

They represent the creaam of the crop of the company’s customers.

They are leading indicators of much bigger market trends.

Some characteristics of enthusiasts

• They have great market knowledge

• They want to be involved

• They’re meticulous about transparency

• They want a discussion

• They are passionate about their readers

ASTROTURFING

• Astroturfing is an English-language euphemism referring to political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization, but designed to mask its origins to create the impression of being spontaneous, popular "grassroots" behavior. The term refers to AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.

Tales from the field

• Exp :Nokia N90 video phone in 2005

• Andy Abramson is blogger, marketing/PR strategist

• Fifty bloggers/ 600 phone

Sponsored Conversation

• According to Forrester Research a Sponsored conversation is a marketing technique in which marketers provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchange for their posting blog content about a brand.

• Examples: Seaworld, Seagate, Panasonic, Symantec, Walmart

How To Make Sponsored Conversations Work

• “1) Sponsorship transparency

• 2) Blogger authenticity

• The FTC says it will look at two parameters when analyzing positive statements about products and services. Is the speaker:

 • 1.Acting solely independently, in which case

there is no endorsement, or

• 2.Acting on behalf of the advertiser or its agent, such that the speaker’s statement is an “endorsement” that is part of an overall marketing campaign?

Some Keys to Working with bloggers

• Choose bloggers carefully.

• Don’t insult their intelligence

• Be transparent

• Be responsive

EMERGING STANDARTS

• You must always attribute and link to the source

• Having a reputation of being crude, disrespectful and crass.

• Transparency ( honesty, integrity, humility)

• In the Blogosphere, short and frequent trumps long and occasional.

A BLOGGER MANİFESTO

• Tell the truth.

• Post fast on good news or bad.

• Use a human vocie not corporate lawyers or PR professionals

• If your life is turnmoil, don’t write.

• Never lie.

• Never hide information

ETHIC CODES OF BLOGGERS• Truth, Accuracy — Make a practice of posting factual content;

don’t knowingly post/publish information that you know is false.• Transparency — Be open in sharing or making the identity of

bloggers, e-mail authors or any Internet author accessible.• Respect — Be mindful of bullying, insults or any inappropriate

content.• Privacy — Maintain yours and others.• Confidentiality — Don’t post/publish confidential information.• Responsibility — Consider the possible consequences of

posting/publishing your content beforehand.• Conflict of Interests — Be mindful of posting/publishing

favorable comments on products or services while being paid to do so by the company that delivers those products and services; use moral judgment. 

• Accountability — Always be accountable for your actions — to your organization, its stakeholders, yourself and to others.

Three SSpeed,Space,Scope

• Making ethical decisions is never easy. The new technology adds to the difficulty because of the little time we have, or rather we think we have. We should always take time to do the right thing, remembering that fixing a problem once an error has been made is time consuming as well.