What’s a typical blog reader?

Weblogs have - how do you put this politely? - something of an image problem in the business environment. There are three responses we hear a lot when talking to businesses about how they could exploit weblogs in a corporate environment;

1. they’ve never heard of the word, let alone know what it means
2. they know what weblogs are, but see them as the preserve of the sandal-wearing geek
3. they can see the use of weblogs as a tool for both internal and external purposes.

Needless to say, we hear a lot more of 1 and 2 than 3.

Some interesting statistics from Blogads that came our way via e-consultancy.com suggest that opinion 2 is actually incorrect. Rather than weblogs being only for Unix geeks and angst-ridden teens, the typical blog reader is in fact older and wealthier than you might suppose. 60% are over 30, and 40% have an income in excess of GBP 50,000 (USD 90,000), while the average female blog reader is older still. Women are in a minority, however, as 80% of blog readers are male.

…the survey describes blog readers as “information junkies”

The research was skewed towards understanding the impact of weblogs on advertising, so it isn’t necessarily clear how these statistics translate into the impact on corporate weblogs, but the numbers suggest that a typical blog reader is more likely to be from the demographic groups that managers and influence makers fall into. And interestingly, the survey describes blog readers as “information junkies” - who are suffering most from information and email overload.

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