Review: eMarketer $695 2006 Business of Blogging Report

A year ago, we told you that eMarketer's 15-page, $695 2005 Business of Blogging report was not worth the money, and brought no new insights to the conversation. Now, the 17-page, $695 2006 eMarketer Business of Blogging report has been published. And this time we recommend it for corporations that still need an overview of blogging.

Like all eMarketer reports, The Business of Blogging is a compilation of published reports. Its conclusions about existing information are reasonable, if not earth-shattering, but surely helpful to companies that have not kept up with the evolution of blogging. The growth of social media marketing, and the factthat blogging is just one of its tools, is not addressed in the report.

The thing is, there is so damn much written about blogging that it's surely impossible for executives to read it all. The eMarketer report does a decent job of compiling a range of published data and getting it all into a 15-minute read. Among the conclusions:

A year ago, eMarketer looked at the business of blogging, and determined that blogs were a personal forum, a one-to-few-medium, and were not practical for businesses. Things have changed.

Blogs that cover product and strategy issues in a compelling, behind-the-scenes way are far more engaging than any press release.

Companies are learning (sometimes the hard way) that monitoring blogs is now an essential part of blog management.

eMarketer believes that a majority of business will participate in blogging over time, as consumers come to expect an alternative to traditional corporate communications. Monitoring blog content is also vital to brand management

When measuring success, marketers should look beyond ROI to other means of evaluation. If a post made for no cost [hellooooo! of course there is no such thing!] is picked up by 50 blogs and read by 50,000 people, how much is that worth?

Blogs are a great way to avoid seeming interchangeable with competitors.

The good news is that blogs do not need to be a mass media play. The audience they reach may be small by MSM standards, but they tend to be influencers.

Shameless self-promotion:

For a $97 overview of corporate blogging and what 85 companies have done with blogs, you can purchase my report, What Could Your Company Do With a Blog? right here.