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The Motivation Behind the Blog: Influencing Others

A couple of interesting stats caught my eye in the new Pew Research report “Bloggers: A Portrait of the Internet's New Storytellers”. The study found that more than 6 in 10 bloggers blog to motivate other people to take action. Wealthier older bloggers are even more likely to indicate that motivating others is a major reason for blogging. 

When asked about the main topics for their blogs, far and away the number one topic bloggers cited was “my life and experiences”.  Topics known for blogs like politics, sports, and news were listed with a fraction of the popularity.

Considering that the “life and experiences” of wealthy older bloggers often includes large purchase decisions like vacations, financial investments, automobiles, health care and technology, this persuasion can affect the sales of a lot of companies.

Probably the most troublesome finding in this study is how liberal bloggers can be with the facts. 28% of the bloggers in the study admitted to “never” spending extra time trying to verify facts when making a blog post and 38% “never” post corrections. Product emotions can be strong and blogs capture these sentiments in the heat of the moment. 

Posted by Brian Cavoli on July 21, 2006 at 04:36 PM | Email this post Permalink

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Comments

It is interesting to see that people want to make a difference, and that's what influencing others says to me.

While we obviously have to be careful about the facts thrown around out there, the premise of the experiences people share and their satisfaction or displeasure about products or services can in general be believed.

We can usually tell the difference between those that are going overboard with their praise or criticism, and find a level of truth in the rest.

Posted by: Gary Bourgeault (thealphamarketer.com) | Jul 27, 2006 2:15:33 AM

I agree with you, and Ryan http://lackofmotivation.wordpress.com/2006/04/ also mentioned something about blogs and bloggers motivation. " I blog because I want to. I blog because it keeps me thinking and, more importantly, writing. I don't blog because I think I'm going to become some superstar"

Posted by: Motivation | Aug 8, 2006 2:01:01 AM

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