Belmont University

The Economics of Blogs

David Evans, co-author of the book Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World's Most Dynamic Companies has written a fascinating essay on the impact of blogs.

The blogosphere is one of the biggest and most influential global industries created in the last decade. Technorati tracks almost 100 million blogs and estimates that about 20 percent of blogs are active in the sense that they were updated in the last 90 days. Hundreds of millions of people globally either operate blogs or contribute to them over the course of the year. With 1.5 million new postings a day, blogging likely consumes billions of hours of effort globally. According to comScore, blogs accounted for slightly more than a third of the 173 billion US Internet visitors in May 2006. All told blogs have become a significant source of competition for all of the on and offline businesses that make their living attracting eyeballs and selling access to those eyeballs to advertisers. The blogosphere creates vast amounts of news and opinion. It is one the major destinations of the many readers fleeing newspapers.

He goes on to examine the motivation behind all of this blogging.

(Thanks to Bill Hobbs for passing this along)


Posted by Jeff Cornwall on August 7, 2007 10:58 AM |

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So what's your motivation for blogging?

Birdied by: K T Cat | August 7, 2007 10:30 PM

A fair question, since I made this post!

Here are the main reasons I blog:

- It is a great format for me to play with ideas. It is my think tank for my writing, speaking and teaching.

- It is a forum for me to talk about what I am passionate about -- entrepreneurship and how foster more of it in this world -- to a broad audience.

- It provides my students with an large repository of good material on a variety of topics. It is a living and growing reference site for any student of entrepreneurship.

- Although it was not an original motive, it has proven to be a way for me to help get the word out about our Entrepreneurship program here at Belmont.

Birdied by: Jeff | August 8, 2007 02:33 PM

To clarify, that last one WAS my motive for helping you start the blog while I worked in the marketing/media office at Blemont. Done right - and yours is - blogs are a good, cheap marketing tool.

Birdied by: Bill Hobbs | August 8, 2007 04:43 PM

Flogs and Blogs Are Not the Same

I am a big fan of blogging. Blogging is a terrific way to build your personal and corporate brand as a knowledge broker, which is my term for someone who writes or speaks on the interests, needs, or problems of a customer segment. Key to a successful blog is authenticity. This brings us to the subject of “flogs”.

A flog is a fake blog. In effect, a flog is a joke or more likely a staged or paid for advertisement disguised as a blog. Flogs are sponsored by companies to create interest for their offerings, while positioning the interests of the audience as an after thought.

An infamous example is described by Wikipedia: “Walmarting Across America was written by two Wal-Mart “fans” who decided to travel across America in a RV and blog about the experience as they visited Wal-Mart’s along the way. While the two people actually did travel across America for the purpose of this blog, it was revealed to be paid for by Wal-Mart.” This flog actually backfired for Wal-Mart with readers becoming angry at the ruse. They protested openly on the web and it turned into a public relations disaster for Wal-Mart.

A credible blog must be authentic. I recommend that they be written in the first person, in plain English, and must address topics that the readers care about. The blog’s purpose is to help, inform, or entertain the reader; admittedly, the blogger hopes to build a constituency with the readers, but that is the blogger’s reward rather than the purpose of the blog itself.

John Bradley Jackson
Blogger and Author of "First, Best, or Different"

Birdied by: John Bradley Jackson | August 10, 2007 12:17 AM

Absolutely true. Blogs have to be authentic to be effective.

Birdied by: Bill Hobbs | August 16, 2007 10:22 AM

The Blogosphere definitely has been influential in how business has shaped over the past few years. Businesses have been slow to adopt blogs as I read once about an incident in which a premiere blogosphere expert was joined by many Fortune 500 representatives who inquired into the possibilities blogging could hold for their companies, almost 2 years after the advent of blogging. In any event, it is never too late. As Seth Godin points out in his writings, marketing used to be about talking. Now it's about talking AND listening. Dissatisfied customers can now rant and rave online about their experiences with various companies, creating a medium of communication through which these companies SHOULD reach back to these people and address the issue at hand.

The faster companies realize this customer oriented method is the way to succeed, the better off they will be, and it is never too late.

Birdied by: Azam Khan | August 31, 2007 06:06 PM

Tap it in and Comment, Please

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