US Blogosphere = Big Business

The blogosphere in the USs is growing into “big biz” says eMarketer in its recent article called: Who doesn’t read a blog now and then?

US Bloggers 2007 - 2012

So, we would have 16% of the internet users in the US “producing” content! A really significant number which needs to be reflected even more in marketing campaigns in 2012 than what we see today.

Let’s look at the numbers on the “consuming” side of the blogospere:

US Blog Readers 2007 - 2012

We’ll reach 70% of “blog readers” of all Internet users in the US. This underlines the important role blogs will inhabit by 2012 and how important it is for brands to “play nice” with the still young “communication channel”.

Next: What money will be spent on advertising on the pages of blogs in the US 2007-2012?

US Blogs Ad Spending 2007 - 2012

From the eMarketer article:

“A big factor driving the increases is the niche orientation of the blogosphere,” says Mr. Verna. 

“Once a haven for techies to communicate with each other in their own lingo, blogs have long since shed this mantle and tapped into the zeitgeist of American culture,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, The Blogosphere: A Mass Movement from Grass Roots. “There are blogs for virtually everything under the sun, from celebrity gossip to political commentary to the most mundane personal minutiae.”

Are you writing your own blog or contribute to one?

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Paul Graham: Some good reading

I have some very busy and highly productive weeks of consulting work behind me. And my blog has suffered!

paulgraham_1912_12884
So Today I want to take some time for the blog and post a link to the site of Paul Graham.

In these days he runs a VC called YCombinator. He has written now for some time Essays about a lot of topics. Ranging from “Web 2.0” – “Copy What You Like” – “How to Present to Investors”.

Take a look!

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Utilizing a corporate blog for company communication

More and more companies are using corporate blogs as part of their (marketing) communication.
But a blog should be a way to open up to your customers. Another example is the new corporate blog of Dell like Micropersuation writes:

Dell Starts Corporate Blog, But Fails to Address Critical Issues
More importantly, Dell really failed to get the blog going the way that they could have. This was a golden opportunity for the company. They could use the blog to engage the community in a genuine conversation on the critical issues that have dogged them for years now as well as the good things they are doing.

Is your company using or planning to use a corporate blog? What are your experiences with corporate blogs?

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Advertising in Blogs and Banner Blindness

Forrester finds (via DM News) in their Report ,”Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2006,” that the spending for advertising on the Internet is mostly e-mail, search, contextual targeting, and rich media. The advertisers are curious about social media things (like blogs) but do not plan to get “into the game” yet…
Let’s find out who will be the first to go deeply into social media advertising! And who will be left behind.

The Nielsen/Normal Group (via Clickz.com) reports that: Internet Users Plagued by Banner Blindness.
An eye-tracking study conducted by the Nielsen/Norman Group finds Internet users avoid viewing banner ads. Text advertising is read more often than display ads, according to the research.

So should the advertisers make the Internet not “too flashy”? And what kind of advertising should sites like YouTube use if the banner is competing videos?

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Podcasting, Audio, Video and iTunes

There is a really good article on Wired today: podcasting after iTunes. If you want to learn the (still short and young) history of podcasting give it a read!

You also gets a little into video podcasting or video blogging. The ratio audio-video is about 10-to-1. And if we take the whole picture we maybe have text-audio-video radio of 100-to-10-to-1. So maybe if you plan to “do something” with blogging… You will find less competition with rising “production efforts”. But on the other side video will be consumed less time than e. g. audio…

What will you go for?

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Corporate Blogging

Is your company offering a corporate weblog? If not than you should at least be planning for one! Jupiter Research finds that 34% of Corporations have a weblog and 35% plan to have one this year.

Addition: Jupiter did not publish anything how their numbers add up compared to other studies made. See JupiterResearch Passes Around The Kool-Aid from the Diva Marketing Blog to question the findings.

Miller Brewing started the Brewing Blog. They inform about the beer industrie. The blog is aimed for B-2-B so do not expect to get the newest miller consumer marketing insights there. I think this is a very clever way of corporate communication. What do you say?

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ION media player for podcasts and the Web

This time i would like to introduce ION: a java based player for media on the Web. A few days ago a new version ha come out that is really great! Use it!

From the Site comes the following description. Experience the Media Web:

A Media Console: ION makes it easy for you to find, manage and experience rich media content on the web. Once you have ION installed, you can subscribe to your favorite content, search multiple media search engines at once, create playlists, and share your favorite content with your friends.

An Open Media Player: When you find the content you want, ION will playback the media for you. It supports most media file formats, so you can sit back and enjoy videos from Yahoo! Video, YouTube, Grouper, Revver or anywhere, in one player. You an also enjoy audio podcasts and songs by indy artists.

ION also provides photocasting technology so that you can subscribe to photo feeds from Flickr (say that really fast!) and other photo-sharing sites that support Syndication.

Media Delivered Automatically

Subscribe to Content Feeds: ION allows you to subscribe to media feeds such as podcasts and video blogs. You can set ION to auto-download the content so that it is waiting for you and ready to play. Every day ION will go out and retrieve new content from your subscribed feeds.

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