Anyone can have a voice

Friday, April 18, 2008

Anyone can have a voice

In this social media world we have the mobile web which you can view on your I-phone; we have MySpace; FaceBook; RSS Feeds; Twitter; and the list will continue to grow.

The fact is, newspapers and bloated traditional news outlets are going to suffer declines in viewers/listeners/readers simply because there are other ways to get information and entertainment. You can have a voice on the internet, and be equal to the 15 year news reporter in readership on the internet.

I prefer the Blog world which often allows two way comunication between the author and the readers. It's also easy to link to other sites and build some virtual networking along with local networking.

I recently wrote about the local blogging scene, click here to see how you can connect with other local bloggers.

Research was done on who are these bloggers? Who are these people who are compelled to share their voices with the world? Here's the stats:

Friday, April 18, 2008

What's A Blogger?

Bloggers are younger and higher percentages are Hispanic & African American than the general population. A higher percentage of Democrats than of Republicans are blogging.

Now that Blogging might better be called a market segment rather than a market niche, it's useful with regard to positioning the marketing message to understand what a Blogger looks like, as distinguished from the rest of the population. According to the BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Survey, 26% of all adults say they regularly or occasionally blog. Of those:

53.7% are male
44.7% are married
28.4% hold a professional or managerial position
10.4% are students.

Bloggers tend to be younger, averaging 37.6 years old, compared to 44.8 for adults 18+ (the "general population"). Ethnically:

69.7% of Bloggers are White/Caucasian (vs. 76.1%)
12.2% are African American/Black (vs. 11.4%)
3.7% are Asian (vs. 2.0%)
20% of Bloggers are Hispanic, compared to 14.8% of adults 18+

In addition, Bloggers report a lower income ($55,819 vs. $56,811) and are better educated (14.3 years of education vs. 14.2).

Political blogs are becoming increasingly common, especially in this election year, where 24.6% of registered voters say they regularly or occasionally blog. Political affiliation of regular/occasional Bloggers look like this in 2008:

37.6% of Libertarians regularly/occasionally blog
26.9% of Democrats
25.7% of Independents
22.9% Republicans

Analysis of Bloggers shows that they are using most forms of new media significantly more than the average market.

Regular/Occasional New Media Usage (Top 5)
	*% of Regular/Occasional Bloggers*	*% of Adults 18+*
Cell Phone	93.0%	87.5%
Instant Messaging	75.3%	49.3%
Download/Access Video/TV Content	72.2%	45.0%
Video Gaming	66.9%	47.5%
Text Messaging	65.5%	45.2%
Source: BIGresearch, January 2008, N=15,727

Although Bloggers are more likely to use new media, the analysis finds that more conventional forms of media trigger their Internet searches. Magazines, at 51.6%, rank highest, followed by: