Category: Blogging

U.S. women say blogs are reliable source of advice

According to a survey from the online network BlogHer, as many as 24 percent of the (U.S.) women in the survey now watch less television because they are blogging instead.

Some other conclusions were:

– Approximately, 36.2 million women actively participate in the blogosphere every week with 15.1 publishing at least one post a week and 21.1 reading and commenting to blogs a week
– More than 40% of women surveyed consider blogs a reliable source of advice and information
– 40% of bloggers believe their biggest impact is through fostering relationships with like-minded individuals
– Half of women surveyed say blogs influence their purchase decisions

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Young politicians in Malaysia required to blog

The Swedish journalism professor Kent Asp said a few months ago that blogs have had almost no effect on the local political opinion. Regardless of how close to the truth such a statement is, there is enough signs from the other side of the pond that we can be convinced that blogs and social media have great potential to impact political views and elections. In Malaysia, the ruling party seems confident that blogs will help the party get re-elected.

CNN reports:
“Abdul Rahman Dahlan, secretary general of the United Malays National Organization party’s youth wing, said all those vying for national youth posts must have blogs to introduce themselves and their programs ahead of party elections in December.”

“All candidates must have blogs,” Abdul Rahman told The Associated Press. “If not, they are not qualified to be leaders.”

Footnote: In Sweden, blogs about politics are among the top categories. On Bloggportalen for example, there are close to 4,000 blogs listed in that category which makes it the third most popular, and 1,053 are listed in the sub-category “politicians”.

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DagensPS to add Twingly and host blogs in redesign

Media Culpa can reveal that the Swedish business online publication DagensPS is planning to introduce blog links via Twingly and social bookmarking features in a new redesign. That’s the conclusion after we got access to two versions of the site at dagensps.se. The new site design, which was labelled “DEMO” just a few days ago, is not yet launched. It has a much simpler feel to it with less (and fewer) colours and lighter fonts. For example are serifs introduced for the largest headlines instead of sans-serifs.

The current design below:

dagensps_old

The demo design below includes such features as “sharing”, i.e. you can save and share articles via the social bookmarking sites Digg, reddit, StumbleUpon, Pusha, del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia and of course via Facebook.

dagensps_new

The new site will also link to blog posts via the Twingly service (DagensPS is not listed yet as a partner of Twingly).

dagesps_twingly

Under “Services” the site is set to include for example a blog hosting service (“create a blog”).

dagensps_blogg

The redesign does not seem to be ready for launch just yet since articles with the old fonts appear further down on the pages. But by the look of it the site will make better use of social media tools and have a more appealing design. Definitely a step into web 2.0.

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10 easy ways to piss off a blogger

Rohit Bargava ran a conversation with about 70 participants at the SXSW with the purpose of establishing a list of “10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger”. I think the group did an excellent job. Here’s the list:

1. Invite bloggers to participate in something and don’t give them a chance to talk about themselves. This was what I opened the session with, followed by letting people around the group introduce their name and their blogs. A list of people who chose to share their names and blogs is at the end of this post.
2. Pretend to be a “long time reader” when you actually just visited the blog once and read a few posts.
3. Use a blogger’s content or identity without giving proper attribution
4. Send irrelevant information that exhibits no understanding of what they care about or fail to personalize it
5. Add them to a PR list and don’t let them get off of it
6. Make it hard for them to link to something by hiding your content behind usernames/passwords, giving them uncertain directions or requiring them to take multiple steps
7. Ask for favors as part of your first outreach to them without building a relationship or earning the right to ask them to help you
8. Fail to identify yourself or falsely represent yourself as something or someone you are not. This includes failing to mention something about your or your employer that is relevant.
9. Set an unreasonable expectation for a blogger and expect things in an unreasonable amount of time … i.e. sending information and expecting them to post within a few hours. Quick poll of our session showed that for the vast majority of bloggers, it’s not their day job.
10. Get the journalism relationship right. Some bloggers consider themselves journalists and others don’t. It was clear from the participants that this is a tricky subject, as some people also noted after the session.

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BlogSweden 3 – third annual Swedish blog survey

Between January 1 and 2, 2008, a total of 1,000 Swedish blog readers responded to an online survey about blogs and social media. Of these respondents, 806 are bloggers and it is mainly their answers that are being presented in this report. The report, BlogSweden 3, is a follow up to BlogSweden 1 and 2 from May 2005 and June 2006.

In the survey, three out of four bloggers are women. Here are some more key findings.

Bloggers: The typical Swedish blogger in the survey is:

• Female
• 16-20 years old
• reads 1-5 blogs daily
• spends 1 hour per week reading blogs
• often reads blogs in the evening (6 PM to 12 PM)
• never uses an RSS reader to read blogs
• likes to read blogs about everyday life experiences
• reads blogs to be entertained
• has never clicked on an advertisement on a blog
• is a member of a social network in order to stay in touch with friends
• has during the last 12 months; downloaded video online, listened to radio online or downloaded podcasts, viewed or downloaded video online, have made photos accessible to others online, and has tagged information online.
• has not during the last 12 months; made videos accessible online, saved links via social bookmarking sites or visited virtual worlds.
• blogs because she likes to write
• updates her blog every day
• has nothing against being contacted by companies in her role as a blogger
• is not anonymous
• does not have ads on her blog, from which she gets part of the revenue

In fact, as many as 76.2% of the bloggers in the survey are female.

1e

There are still some major differences between the way male and female bloggers behave:

• Women more often blog anonymously than men (49.2% compared to 34.0%).
• Male bloggers blog to a higher extent than female bloggers to market a product or a service, to influence others, to strengthen their brand, to create an archive of information and because there is a need for more voices in the public debate.
• Female bloggers blog to a higher extent than male bloggers to get in touch with others and to stay in touch with friends and family.
• 66.5% of all bloggers update their blog every day. Female bloggers update their blogs more often than male bloggers (74.1% at least once a day, compared to 42.6% of male bloggers).
• Male bloggers more often than female bloggers have ads on their blogs (14.3% compared to 7.4%).

When a blogger forms an opinion about a company, she thinks that “a person like me or a peer” is the most trustworthy spokesperson. “A blogger” is as trustworthy as the company CEO, according to bloggers.

One in three bloggers have bought a product after reading about it on a blog. An equally high proportion of bloggers have refrained from buying a product after reading information or opinions on a blog. One in three have, after reading information on a blog, acted in order to influence a company or a politician on an important topic.

13e

There are also significant differences between how female and male blog readers behave (all respondents in the survey):

Female blog readers prefer reading blogs about:
• Fashion and design (53.0%)
• Everyday life experiences (51.6%)
• Photography and art (26.6%)
• Parenthood and children (24.3%)
• Music (22%)
• Literature and writing (17.2%)
• Movies and tv (16.9%)
• Journalism and media (16.7%)
• Sex and dating (16.5%)
• Politics and society (14.4%)

Male blog readers prefer reading blogs about:
• Politics and society (49.2%)
• IT and blogging (45.8%)
• Journalism and media (45.3%)
• Everyday life experiences (39.4%)
• Advertising and PR (25.8%)
• Movies and tv (25.4%)
• Music (23.7%)
• Photography and art (19.5%)
• Literature and writing (18.6%)
• Economy and entrepreneurship (15.7%)

Over all, the favorite topics of blog readers are blogs about:

• Everyday life experiences (48.6%)
• Fashion and design (44%)
• Photography and art (24.9%)
• Journalism and media (23.8%)
• Politics and society (23%)

Here is a table of the most popular blog categories among bloggers:

10e

The report BlogSweden 3 is free to download under a Creative Commons license and if you would like to discuss the findings you can join Media Culpa on Facebook or find me on Twitter. More graphs can be found at Flickr.

Footnote: The respondents were chosen through a convenience sample which means that the results from this survey is only representative to the respondents of the survey and not necessarily reflect the profile of all Swedish bloggers and blog readers.

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Aftonbladet uses Tailsweep for blog advertising

Anton, Beta Alfa and Gnu & Tapir write that it seems like Aftonbladet has started using Tailsweep, the advertising network that runs on a number of Swedish blogs, including this one. The assumption was based on a banner that was up for a short while on artist Magnus Uggla’s blog on Aftonbladet.se. And if we look at Tailsweep’s site we can confirm that this is the case. There are at least three blogs in the sports category, including Robert Laul, and six political blogs, including Helle Klein and Lotta Gröning.

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