BlogHer Survey - Women Love Blogs (Are you surprised?)

Posted on | April 9, 2008 |

• Last week I attended BlogHer’s Business Conference in NYC. They opened the conference by releasing a study about women’s passion for blogging. BlogHer partnered with Compass Partners to do a social media benchmark study of more than 6,000 women. They surveyed 1,250 female Internet users via a nationally representative panel, and 5,000 visitors to BlogHer’s network. The full presentation of results is here. Granted the study may be a bit skewed towards women with blogs since they would have one to be part of the BlogHer network, but still some interesting stuff. [Correction per Elisa Camahort - one of BlogHer’s founders from her comment below - thanks for the clarification - the survey respondents in both cases (general population and BlogHer Network) were both bloggers and readers-only, so there was no need to have a blog to take the survey. Also, most of the stats were pulled from the general population survey, not the BlogHer Network survey.]

A few highlights:

• 36.2 million women actively participate in the blogsophere every week (15.1 publishing, 21.1 reading and commenting
• 58% have children at home – maybe mommy needs a place to vent?
• Favorite topics relate directly to lifestage – i.e. 18-24 are interested in dating topics, Boomers are more interested in Wellness topics
• Interest in reading about someone else’s life declines with age, become topic focused
• 50% of those surveyed regard blogs as a highly reliable or very reliable source of information.
• Only 30% of respondents said that a blog influenced their purchase decision. 50% said that blogs do not impact purchase decisions (I find this a bit odd given that other studies say reviews greatly influence purchasing decisions.).
• The blogging community is passionate – before
  giving up participating in the blogosphere:
  – 43% would give up reading the newspaper or
  magazines
  – 50% would give up their PDAs
  – 42% would give up their i-Pod
  – 55% would even give up alcohol

Online fashion expert, style and shopping expert, Michelle Madhok, is the CEO of White Cat Media LLC publisher of blogs SheFinds.com and MomFinds.com, sites that help busy women shop online.

Comments