The Basement

I was recently pointed to results of a wonderful blog readers survey conducted by Blogads. From what I can gather, the survey was announced on March 2, 2005 here and was open for about a week on SurveyMonkey. There were 30,079 respondents. The survey measured blog reader – not just bloggers – but 20.7% were also bloggers. From a strict market research perspective, the sampling methodology might be somewhat less than scientific, but my feeling is that the results are probably pretty representative of active, adult, professional blogs, i.e. I don't think there are a lot of teen-aged girls journal blogs in there. Here's what Blogads has to say about they're, um, methodology...

How much credence should you give this survey? The survey was designed as much to provoke as to prove. I'll paraphrase what I wrote last year: the survey's responses are a fragment of a sample of a subset. There are millions of bloggers. Last week I e-mailed roughly 100 of them -- some of the biggest bloggers, many of whom focus on politics and/or sell blogads -- suggesting they link to they survey. Some of the bloggers I wrote to (and some I didn't) linked to the survey; some of their readers clicked; some were offended by questions written mostly for Americans; some aspiring respondents were unable to complete Surveymonkey's sometimes buggy forms. So wield a salt shaker as you munch on this data.

The interesting thing to me is that Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, had the foresight to ask the 12 question Influentials battery outlined in the Berry & Keller's book, The Influentials. Later, in this post, he claims that "70% of blog readers are influentials, those articulate, networked 10% of Americans who set the agenda for the other 90%". I suspect that bloggers are even more influential than the aggregated blog readers. Mr. Copeland also published the results spilt out by political party affiliation here. There was a fair amount of discussion about this study back in March but I haven't seen any that really dug into the numbers. I think there is some significant untapped value here. I'm hoping I can get the dataset from the Blogads folks to further dissect these numbers.

I did come up with this tidbit though...based on the straight tabs Mr. Copeland posted here, and the 2001 Roper data reported in The Influentials, I constructed this chart to evaluate how a Blog Influential might be different than your standard garden variety Roper American Influential.

(Click image to get a better view.)

I'm not sure if Berry & Keller included non-responders in their base (I'm guessing yes, but it's unclear from the books footnotes.) There were 3,881 Blogads respondentns that did not mark any of the 11 Influential indicator questions. So to be thorough, I've included Blogads Blog Readers (All) which includes the non-responders in the base as well as Blogads Blog Readers (Responders) which throws the non-responders out of the base.

First off, it's very obvious that Blogads Blog Readers (BBRs) are much closer to Influentials than they are to the rest of us plain folk.

Second, there are three categories that BBRs lag Roper's Influentials: Attended a public meeting on town or school affairs; Served on a committee for some local organization; and Served as an officer for some club or organization. What's the common thread? Yes, that's right – blog readers are NOT as active locally in the real world. Their activism is likely focused on larger geographies and administered virtually. Tom Friedman would be proud – the Blog Influential's Spiral of Influence is flat.

As I read The Influentials, I began to question the validity of their battery in the modern context. Shouldn't blogging, podcasting or actively maintaining a webpage count just as much as "Written a letter to the Editor of a newspaper or magazine or called a live radio or TV show to express an opinion" ? Why does group participation have to be "local"? For me, the Blogads Survey puts exclamation marks after those questions marks.

For these research geeks among you who are foaming at the mouth about statistical validity consider this – in one week, by sending out about 100 emails, Henry Copeland surveyed 30,079 consumers, found 21,000 Roperish Influentials and collected their demographics and opinions. Last year he surveyed 17,159 in a similar week. By this time next year, he'll have a tracking study. Oh, and he's been giving away the data for free.