Seat at the Table

Until now, blog research and blog promoters seemed to focus on the general influence of blogs, implying that blogs directly impact the general consumer population.  Given that I know very few people who read blogs reguarly, if at all, I’ve always had a hard time believing a direct impact existed (yes, people I know are online almost daily).  However, I do believe blogs have a big impact on people that influence the general population.  Most reporters, analyts, conference managers, consumer activists and other types of people in the information ecosystem do read blogs regularly. 

Research to be released by Edelman’s sounds like it will start to address these issues.  In this recent post, In his recent post, Richard Edelman starts to outline the specifics of who blogs/bloggers influence and how they fit into the flow of information from source to the broader media ecosystem to the general population.  Some of the key points he made are as follows:

• Mainstream media reporters regularly use blogs as information sources and quotable material;
• Blogs are breaking more stories (a good example cited is the YouTube/Google deal being broken by Techcrunch;
• Influencers - defined as people who active attempt to “impact the public discourse” - are more likely to read blogs;
• These influencers and blog readers are more likely to take action (another good example cited is 78% of German blog readers attending a public meeting on issues covered in a blog); and
• Multinational companies draw more attention from local bloggers than companies headquartered in a market.

With more similar information, this study looks like it will provide the specific information communications professionals need to understand how blogs impact communications and where they should fall into a communications strategy.   That’s a big step in moving past the hype and into a practical reality.

(disclosure – I used to work at Edelman)