To get a better picture of the Swedish blogger and blog reader, I conducted an online survey between June 28 and July 4, 2006 where 700 blog readers answered a number of questions. BlogSweden 2 is the second annual blog survey that I have conducted and here are some key results:
Bloggers: The typical Swedish blogger in the survey is:
• Female
• 26-30 years old
• has a college/university degree
• would vote for the Social Democratic Party if there was an election today (read: between June 28 and July 4, 2006)
• has a broadband connection
• 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 anonymous
• reads 6-10 blogs daily
• spends 6-10 hours per week reading blogs
• never uses an RSS reader to read blogs
• likes to read blogs about everyday life experiences
• reads blogs to read “ordinary” people’s views
• has never clicked on an advertisement on a blog
Blog readers: The typical blog reader in the survey has a similar profile, but:
• would vote for the Moderate Party if there was an election today (read: between June 28 and July 4, 2006)
• reads 1-5 blogs daily
Other interesting results from the survey:
• Half of all Swedish blog readers in the survey spend 5 or more hours per week reading blogs (43 minutes or more per day) which is more than the Swede generally spends on reading daily newspapers.
• Most female blog readers don’t use an RSS reader to read blogs, (25.5% use RSS at least sometimes), but male blog readers do (59.6%)
Male blog readers prefer reading blogs about:
• Politics and society (69.9%)
• Journalism and media (59.3%)
• IT and blogging (54.7%)
• Everyday life experiences (35.6%)
• Literature and writing (24.9%)
• Economy and entrepreneurship (24.6%)
• Advertising and PR (23.4%)
Female blog readers prefer reading blogs about:
• Everyday life experiences (74.7%)
• Fashion and design (39.9%)
• Journalism and media (38.8%)
• Literature and writing (38.5%)
• Politics and society (32.2%)
• Parenthood and children (31.3%)
• Food and beverages (31.3%)
• Women blog anonymously (68.2%), but men don’t (29.6%)
• Nearly four out of ten bloggers have at least once regretted something they posted on their blog.
• One in four bloggers have at least once felt harassed by comments in the blogosphere.
• Male bloggers blog to a higher extent than female bloggers to influence others, strengthen their brand, to create an archive of information and because there is a need for more voices in the public debate.
• Nine out of ten bloggers update their blog every week. Female bloggers update their blogs more often than male bloggers (68.9% at least once a day, compared to 46.6% of male bloggers).
• Male bloggers more often than female bloggers have ads on their blogs (18.2% compared to 3.9%).
• More male bloggers say they have clicked on an advertisement on a blog (40.8% compared to 28.4% of female bloggers).
I will upload as many graphs as possible to Flickr, tagged with “blogsweden2”.
The entire report (pdf) can be found here in English or in Swedish. Last year’s survey, BlogSweden 1.0 is here in English and in Swedish. I’m sorry that it took so long to translate the report and if I will do a third survey I need to find a less time-consuming solution in order to produce a report in both languages.
Footnote: Respondents were chosen through a convenience sample.
Tags: Sweden, surveys, blog research, blogsweden, bloggsverige, bloggar. Ping.