Technorati: State of the Blogosphere Oct 2006

David Sifry released Technorati's State of the Blogosphere post today. David states that about 55% of all blogs are "active," meaning there has been a post made to the blog in the past three months.

Here are the highlights:

• "Technorati is now tracking more than 57 Million blogs.
• Spam-, splog- and sping-fighting efforts at Technorati are paying dividends in terms of the reduction of garbage in our indexes, even if it does seem to impact overall growth rates.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
• About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day, again down slightly quarter-over-quarter but probably due in part to spam fighting efforts.
• About 4% of new splogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• There is a strong correlation between the aging and post frequency of blogs and their authority and Technorati ranking.
• The globalization of the blogosphere continues. Our data appears to show both English and Spanish languages are a more universal blog language than the other two most dominant language, Japanese and Chinese, which seem to be more regionally localized.
• Coincident with a rise in blog posts about escalating Middle East tensions throughout the summer and fall, Farsi has moved into the top 10 languages of the blogosphere, indicating that blogging continues to play a critical role in debates about the important issues of our times."

6 Marketers: Why Blogging Matters

Churbuck.com has a post up with 6 marketing professionals opinions on blogs for corporations.

#1 - PR and Blogging – A Love Story or Peaceful Coexistence 

Dan Greenfield  is vice president of corporate communications at EarthLink. 

"We are living an age where boundaries are collapsing, definitions are changing and roles are combining.  Blogging and PR need each other, belong with each other, even though they can sometimes appear to be working against each other."

 #2 – Blogging and the “new influencers”

Eric Kintz is VP, Global Marketing Strategy at Hewlett-Packard.

"Marketers will need to identify first the new key blogger-influencers in their space, using tools likeAlexa or Technorati, and treat them more and more like some of the other influencing constituencies such as analysts or journalists."

 #3 – The role of blogging in the changing world of advertising

Will Waugh is Senior Director, Communications – ANA.

"The utilization of blogs is critical, particularly in a growing world where social currency is more and more important. They are powerful communication and business tools which can connect with a variety of audiences for your brands/products/services. These audiences range from core customers to prospects to influencers to investors."

 #4 – The role of blogging as part of an integrated web strategy

David Churbuck is Vice President, Global Web Marketing at Lenovo.

"In context, a blog is an efficient way for a corporation to quickly publish onto the Internet and through a syndication pipeline, messages that may need rapid dissemination or a more personal voice than the corporate online edifices represented by so-called traditional web sites. Taken as a “light” content management system, blogs can be regarded as loosely associated sites that can have a strong effect on the organization’s primary web presence."

#5 - Drive Harmony in Conversational Touchpoints

Pete Blackshaw is Chief Marketing Officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics

"Blogging is a great way to put a fresh new face on a corporate structure, but the rest of the organization can't be too far behind.  As corporate leaders, we need to develop the right strategies and tactics to ignite and catalyze positive change leveraging blog tools and methods while keeping the rest of the organization in tow."

#6 - Creativity, Innovation + Blogging

David Armano is Creative VP at Digitas.

"Looking back at my blog after nearly eight months, I realize that in addition to building a community and gaining momentum—I have created a the ultimate digital sketchbook for myself. Blogging is a great way to document your creative process for future reference for say, writing a book."

Grasshopper, there is no kimono

It's become clear that a fundamental shift in thinking that needs to take place if marketers are to make the transition to a media 2.0 world. We've all heard (and probably said ourselves) expressions about "opening the kimono" and how the internet was the medium that required doing so -- well, true, but not far enough, because the entire concept retains media 1.0 artifacts of thought that can critically damage your brand -- as evidenced by the Walmart/Edelman "flog" fiasco.

In a 1.0 world, there is a "kimono" -- a veil of separation between your brand and your marketplace -- that marketers choose to open and close to varying degrees at various times and in various media. Marketers in effect wholly own their brands and play the role of geisha, cleverly and seductively showing a little ankle in order to entice markets into a branded relationship.

In a 2.0 world, it's clear that brands are co-owned with your markets. This isn't a new lesson -- the New Coke debacle/triumph (depending on where you are re that conspiracy theory) illustrated this concept years ago. New media vehicles just exacerbate the issue. When you have truly wrapped your head around co-ownership, you will find that you have very different notions about how to use these vehicles. 2.0 blogging for Walmart? Well, on the one hand, your brand co-owners will expect a highly authentic blog from Walmart leadership, addressing the real issues and opportunities facing the brand in the marketplace. Marketing campaigns that incorporate blogging are fine -- but are either openly "made up" -- think about an interactive ad campaign in which an obviously manufactured teen cartoon character blogs about back to school -- or "authentic" - in which, say, four real moms (and a single-parent dad) blog about getting their kids back to school and the real challenges they face. OK, these ideas are off the top of my head, but serve the purpose to illustrate the  principle at work here: wake up and smell the sake, folks -- there is no kimono.

B2B blog engagement (or lack thereof)

A new study commisioned by American Business Media and performed by Harris Interactive looks at how business decisionmakers use various media types. While websites rank high for engagement and contribution to decisionmaking at a number of stages of the buying process, blogs are, for now, another story. Just 11% use them regularly, just 1% of respondents rated them as a first source for learning about new products, and blogs rated only a 14 on a relative scale of self-reported engagement (out of a possible score of 100.)

While this data is to be taken with a grain of salt as it is a composite across industries, and purely self-reported, it does suggest that blogs actual influence on the purchase process may be less pronounced than the level of readership they receive -- at least right now.

I wouldn't read this as a reason not to build a B2B blog -- but would suggest instead that this speaks to the need to have a well thought-out blog strategy based on an understanding of just what role blogs can play in the buying process with the various players in your market (instigators, influencers, approvers, funders, etc.) To build this understanding, B2B marketers need to re-visit their objectives for  and approach to carrying our research.