~M.G. Seriam

Rationale

The current revolution in personal writing and instant publishing is called blogging. A business blog is an informal, easily maintained way to regularly communicate with your customers and employees. Unlike traditional media that require lead time for publishing, blogs are frequently updated, often daily, online journals of opinions, information and links to interesting content online.

Blogging is a global phenomenon, with people from all over the world recording their thoughts, experiences, ideas and opinions to be read by anyone and everyone who might be interested. Studies show that people increasingly often turn to blogs rather than news channels if they want to understand the situation on the ground in crisis situations, for example during Hurricane Katrina and the tragic situation in New Orleans. There are some fascinating accounts coming out of Baghdad, Afganistan, and China – in fact if one is interested in a place, one can find someone there blogging about it!

Reading blogs is a way of engaging with ideas and opinions that have emerged from the passions and interests of real people. Bloggers do not usually have an agenda other than to explore the world around them – a very few have businesses to plug or products to endorse but its apparent straightaway if that’s the case – and most are just using this medium to contribute to the discussion of things happening in the world and draw attention to issues they think are important.

There has been a lot written about the passive nature of people’s lives in this media rich age: bombarded with television, adverts, news reports and opinions with little incentive to engage the brains at all! Yet the phenomenal growth of blogging – there are an estimated 48 million blogs in cyberspace, up from just 100,000 two years ago, according to blog search engine Technorati – means that people are obviously not satisfied being the passive consumers of media, they want to contribute to it too.

Two years ago, media agency Universal McCann started the most extensive global survey on social media. Here are the highlights of the study as summarized by the authors:

• · Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development. If you are online you are using social media

• · Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region.

• · All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves
  • Video clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31 % penetration in Wave 1 to 83 % in Wave 3

• · 57 % have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content
  • 55 % of users have uploaded photos
  • 22 % of users have uploaded videos

• · The widget economy is real
  • 23 % of social network users have installed an application
  • 18 % of bloggers have installed applications in their blog templates

• · Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and as a collective rival any traditional media
  • 73 % have read a blog

• · The blogosphere is becoming increasingly participatory, now 184 m bloggers world-wide
  • The number one thing to blog about is personal life and family

• · China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42 m bloggers, more than the US and Western Europe combined

• · Social media impacts your brand’s reputation
  • 34 % post opinions about products and brands on their blog
  • 36 % think more positively about companies that have blogs