Here are a few quick links to recent blog related research. A conclusion can be that corporate blogs are good for your brand, but many consumers don’t “get blogs”, in that they don’t understand how they work and much of their usefulness is lost.
Catalyst Group has a new study (pdf) about blogs and usability. It is interesting reading and not all thumbs up for the blogosphere.
Market Sentinel and Weboptimiser have published a white paper (pdf) about the impact of RSS, search and blogging for brands. [Via Marketing Studies.]
“87% of the population use search engines as their primary means of finding sites. Search results are increasingly impacted by commentary from message boards and blogs.”
Backbone Media has published a report (pdf) that gives valueable insights into the world of corporate blogging. Some conclusions are:
“Over 83% of bloggers saw a traffic increase, while for 54% of respondents the blog represented less than 35% of their traffic. For 5% of bloggers their blog represented 100% of traffic. Journalists contacted 59% of survey respondents. Less than half of bloggers received a published article from the contact. 18% of bloggers have experienced negative PR.” [Via Media Orchard.]