Getting real with blogs

Two of the best ways to 'get real' with blogging, are by looking at the facts and figures and getting some hands-on practical advice. We here at Six Apart are, obviously, firm believers in the power of blogging. Over the past twelve months, we've seen a big upswing in blogging on both the personal and corporate level. Business blogging is now a big market, and as makers of Movable Type and TypePad, we are often asked by companies and industry leaders to share our knowledge and best practices on how companies can use blogging to impact their bottom line.

Many of you have also asked us for data to back up the growing blogging trend, to help you make the case at your own businesses. So, we were glad to ask comScore Media Metrix to put together a market research report (co-sponsored with Gawker) on "Behaviors of the Blogosphere", that looks at how blog readers are interacting with blogs and delves into who these readers are. The report was released today, and we are excited to announce that nearly 50 million Americans, or about 30 percent of the total U.S. Internet population, visited blogs in Q1 2005 and that three of the top six blog hosts - TypePad.com, Livejournal.com and Blogs.com are Six Apart properties.

The reports' additional major findings include:

• Five hosting services for blogs each had more than 5 million unique visitors in Q1 2005, and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each.
• Of 400 of the largest blogs observed, segmented by eight (non-exclusive) categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by "hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women.
• Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on high-speed connections.
• Compared to the average Web user, blog readers visit nearly twice as many Web pages, and are more likely to shop online.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can take advantage of this growing trend, we recommend attending the upcoming Blog Business Summit on August 17th - 19th in San Francisco. Business bloggers from GM, Boeing, Microsoft and Intuit will be presenting. And our own Anil Dash, who runs our Professional Network, will be speaking about Blog Metrics. We have secured a special Six Apart discount that will save you $400 dollars on registration. We expect this conference to be filled with practical tools and techniques for promoting products, brands, events, and gathering critical business intelligence and competitive data. We look forward to seeing you there.