« Blog Bits - Week of October 3rd | Main | The Open Source Revolution Takes Shape - Consumers Are Gaining Control »

Another Benefit to Reading Blogs - My Eyes and Ears When I'm Not There

It's that time of year again when I'm trying to decide how many conferences I should/can attend and which will provide the most benefit (whether personally or professionally).  I suspect I'm not alone on this one.  For example, over the past couple of weeks I was interested in attending the Forrester Consumer Forum,  WOMMA conference (Word of Mouth vs. Advertising Conference) and OMMA East all in NYC but didn't make it due to 5 (yes 5) other conferences that Cymfony partnered with during the same period.  But thanks to the Internet, consumer generated media and MSM I am finding some great sites that offer insights straight from the attendees perspective.  WOMMA's conference wrap-up page provides a summary of media and blog coverage of some of these events. Another short but informative summary published by InformationWeek about the Consumer Forum '05 offered stats delivered during the opening of the conference and Forrester's recent research reports on business intelligence.  Chris Charron, Forrester research director is quoted as saying:

"Technology has given consumers an option to tune business out, and tune each other in... On the flip side, technology has given businesses an opportunity to gain greater customer insights at a lower cost."

According Forrester via the InformationWeek article, blogs, RSS feeds and social networking are gaining in popularity (Ah, yes, I think we can all agree on this one).  But only blogs have reached the 1-in-10 barrier, meaning 1-in-10 consumer are reading blogs.  The key findings include:

  • The amount of blog readership has doubled from 2004 - up to 10% in 2005. 
  • RSS use tripled in 2005 to 6%. 
  • Social network sites (such as Friendster.com and MySpace.com) has increased from 4% last year to 6 percent in 2005. 

My first thought is that 2005 hasn't even come to a close yet.  I'm curious to know if these stats will increase by year end. There are some additional more in-depth summaries of the conference that can be found by doing a quick search on technorati by typing "Forrester Consumer Forum".

The most talked about session came when senior analyst Charlene Li took that stage.  DMNews reported that Charlene immediately asked the question "what do blogs, rss and search engines have in common?"  Her answer? "They require marketers to give up a degree of control."  She went on to say that computing has changed customer behavior and brand loyalty for good - yet marketers haven't tapped the power of consumer-to-consumer connections.  As widely reported, Li talked about five rules for marketers interested in running blogs and other social computing tools.  Here's a quick list but check out the DMNews article "Forrester's Li:  Marketers Must Give UP Some Control" for more info:

  1. Engage in conversations
  2. Enjoy the conversations
  3. Make customer tell marketers what they want
  4. Place the ability in the hands of the users
  5. Marketers should admit mistakes

"How do you measure the benefits of public relations and branding? How do you measure loyalty?  - It's not how many people have you sold," Li said, "but how many people have you influenced?" 

Granted, reading an event summary in CGM or MSM is not the same as actually being there but I'm really enjoying the fact that I don't necessarily have to attend every event to find interesting material.  And online discussion (or CGM) offers individual perspectives that can open your mind to a different take on a specific speaker or conference session.  I also find CGM useful in pointing me to some really great articles that I may not always find in a traditional search. 

Posted by Cymfony on October 10, 2005 at 09:34 AM | Email this post Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341cdcdc53ef00d83520415153ef

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Another Benefit to Reading Blogs - My Eyes and Ears When I'm Not There:

Comments

The comments to this entry are closed.