Bloggers are generally more affluent than the average person

5 things journalists should know about the report:

• The blogosphere continues to be dominated by male, affluent and educated bloggers
• Bloggers use Twitter far more than the average person and microblogging is changing blogging habits
• Blogging is becoming more mainstream and influential, but not replacing traditional media
• More bloggers are making money, but most don’t make any
• Most bloggers are “hobbyists” and are driven by personal fulfilment rather than financial gain.

Last week over five days, Technorati released the annual 2009 State of the Blogosphere Report with a strong theme of gaining strength. A record number of 2,828 bloggers submitted extensive surveys about their blogging activities from the past year from 50 countries, with half from the US (48%), 26% from the EU, 10% from the APAC (Asia Pacific) and 16% from elsewhere.
Results were combined with interviews with professional and well-known bloggers and statistics and findings from Lijit and Blogcritics. Bloggers were separated into four distinct groups; hobbyists, part-timers, self-employeds and professionals.

While blogging is gaining in popularity and credibility, the blogging demographic doesn’t appear to be widening. The average blogger continues to be male (two thirds), affluent (a majority have household incomes of an average of $75,000) and educated.

While most bloggers are blogging more regularly and have at least three blogs, the majority consider their output a hobby (72%).

The vast majority of bloggers seek to share their personal experience for emotional and personal fulfilment rather than monetary gain. Most bloggers feel their blog has acted positively on their personal and professional lives. Generally, respondents said they blog for one of three distinct reasons: speaking one’s mind; sharing expertise and experiences with family and friends (old and new); and making money or doing business.

70% of all respondents say that personal satisfaction is a way they measure the success of their blog, but for Pros, the leading measure of success is the number of unique visitors.

The survey found that contrary to popular belief, many bloggers have had professional media experience, with 35% of all respondents having worked in traditional media as a writer, reporter, producer, or on-air personality, and 27% continue to do so.

Interestingly, the report found that while bloggers read other blogs they do not consider them a substitute for other news sources and the majority do not consider online media more important than traditional media. However, 31% don’t think newspapers will survive the next ten years.

The report highlighted the instrumental role the blogosphere has played in recent global issues; namely the protests during the recent Iranian elections and debate surrounding last year’s US presidential elections. Even though only a relatively small number of bloggers commented on these events, bloggers believe their influence on global affairs is growing. 51% believe it will be a more effective tool to voice dissent in the future and 39% believe blogs made the Iranian protests earlier this year more effective.

Bloggers are getting savvier and more influential. Most bloggers know how their blog is created and use an average of five activities to draw an audience to their site. Bloggers with greater audiences and with Technorati authority ratings blog more regularly, posting more than 300 times more than lower ranked bloggers. One in five bloggers report updating on a daily basis, but the majority update their blog two to three times per week. The survey results and interviews with influential bloggers clearly show the number of page views depends on how prolific a blog is.

More bloggers are earning some revenue from their blog, but they are not in the majority and most income streams are indirect. For 83% of people that make money from their blog, it is not their primary income. Interviewees agreed the key to a successful blog is passion. In each case they describe how professional and lucrative blogging stemmed from their original passion and drive.

The growth of Twitter is having a big impact on the blogosphere. A large proportion of bloggers (73%) report using Twitter, largely for promotion and interaction with readers, compared with just 14% of the general population. Furthermore, according to Lijit, blogs with greater than 100 page views a day received on average 83% of their page views from Twitter referrals. Twitter was also by far the fastest growing content source to be included by bloggers.

Bloggers are avid Twitter users

The second part of Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report is out, with more obvious headlines: the more you post, the better your blog does. Here’s the detail from TechCrunch:

“Blogging is a volume game. The more you post, the more chances there are that someone else will link to one of your posts. (Technorati rank is based on the number of recent links to your blog). The majority of the Top 100 blogs tracked by Technorati post five or more times per day, and a full 43 percent post more than 10 times per day. Meanwhile, 64 percent of the 5,000 blogs ranked lower than 600 post two to four times a day, which is still a serious commitment.”

For ‘Technorati’, you can also read ‘Google’, as it also ranks pages based on how many incoming links they have (among other things).

This really only confirms what own experience – and those of millions of others – suggests. But I would add a caveat.

While regular posting definitely increases blog traffic, a well considered, high quality post can be just as effective. Posts like the 21st Century Newsroom series generate a constant stream of visits to this blog, for instance. Another point is that frequent posting can result in good posts being buried beneath other ones when people check their RSS readers.

The best strategy, it seems, is a balance of frequency with quality.

Just when I thought I’d put the 21st century newsroom to bed, along comes a further brainwave about conceptualising newsgathering in an online environment (the area I covered in part 2: Distributed Journalism). It seems to me that the first stage for any journalist or budding journalist lies along two paths: subscribing to a reliable collection of RSS feeds (and email alerts); and exploring a collection of networks. The first part is passive; the latter, more active. So I’ve called it, tongue-in-cheek, “Passive-Aggressive Newsgathering”. But if that sounds too Woody Allen for you, you could call it “Aggregating-Networking Newsgathering”.

Not quite as catchy, though, is it?

Note: an edited version of this was published in Journalism.co.uk as How to: use RSS and social media for newsgathering

As you can see from the diagram above, each RSS element has a social equivalent. Here’s the detail:

Blog and site feeds/Social RSS readers

This is a basic requirement for any journalist: know the news sources – mainstream and blogs – in your specialist areas, and subscribe to their RSS feed using any of the many RSS readers out there. The result should be a one-stop page that you check into every morning that aggregates any new stories since you last checked. You may want to develop further strategies, such as folders for different areas, or for feeds that you check every day, every week, or less often.

But some RSS readers do more than just allow you to subscribe to feeds – they have social elements. Google Reader, for example, will “recommend” feeds you might be interested in (in a panel on the right of the screen), based on the feeds you already subscribe to (and what their subscribers also read). Bloglines, in addition, allows you to click on any of your feeds and see others who subscribe to that feed – and what other feeds they subscribe to (see image below – although this feature doesn’t appear to be included in their latest beta). Other readers will have similar functions (if they don’t, consider switching reader – you can export your subs across very easily). This is a great way to find new sources of news and information.

Twitter and Twitter tools

Microblogging service Twitter is a particularly up-to-the-minute source of news – again, with RSS feeds you can subscribe to, as well as mobile notifications. Twitter is by nature social – you choose to ‘follow’ someone’s ‘tweets’ (updates); and people choose to follow you. You can see who someone is following, and who is following you. There are also tools like Twubble, which will recommend twitterers based on your friends, and Twits Like Me, which recommends twitterers based on interest. These can lead to useful contacts and sources of news you might not otherwise have come across.

A good way to find Twitterers in your area is to look for links on their blogs and article pages, while Twitter is searchable too. But that’s just the start. You can search Twitter itself for specific people, but if you’re covering a local patch, Twitterlocal allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed of tweets within a certain geographical radius, while specialist reporters should subscribe to results of relevant keyword searches using Tweetscan. If you know an event is coming up that is likely to spark protest (e.g. the running of the Olympic torch) then it’s a good idea to set up this feed in advance.

Bookmarking site feeds, networks and tags

Bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg and Reddit (plus all of these) are a goldmine of information and leads. As well as being searchable, most offer RSS feeds of individual tags, contributors (anyone who uses the site to bookmark webpages), and networks (collections of contributors). At the very least, a journalist should be subscribing to feeds of keywords in their area (e.g. this is the feed for the tag ‘social bookmarking’), and if possible, prolific bookmarkers interested in the same topics (here is the feed for my bookmarks) or networks of bookmarkers (here’s mine).

But to do the latter, journalists need to use the sites themselves – the more active you are, the more you will get out. Every time you bookmark a webpage, you can see who else has bookmarked it (see image below). You can see who bookmarked it first (and is therefore potentially the quickest source). You can see their comments, and the tags they use. You can see what else they’re bookmarking. And you can add them to your network so you’re kept up to date on what they’re bookmarking generally.

All of this can generate more useful contacts (the bookmarkers), more sources of news, and more understanding of your area.

Facebook feeds/Social networks

Journalism is all about contacts. Social networks are a fantastic way of finding and managing them, whether those are existing contacts, contacts of contacts (which you can now see), or members of relevant interest groups (the Online Journalism Blog Facebook group is one you may consider joining ). You may want to join more than one social network: Facebook is a good catchall, but LinkedIn is good for more professional networking, while there may be specific ‘beat’ networks you can join – such as for doctors. Alternatively, you can create your own using Ning.

One great feature of Facebook is its feeds, which include Friends Status Updates and Friends Posted Items (both in the lower right corner). Again, subscribe.

Google Alerts/’similar pages’

Google’s whole success is built on social media: its rankings are calculated (in part) from how many people link to a site. But it’s worth exploring other features too. Every result from a search, for example, will include a link to ‘similar pages’. This is a great way of refining your search. Similarly, the advanced search feature includes the ability to search for pages that link to a particular website.

Meanwhile, it’s basic journalism practice now to set up email alerts for particular search terms. You can do this through Google Alerts – the default setting is ‘Comprehensive’, but it’s better to use the drop-down menu to select the more specific ‘News’, ‘Groups’ or ‘Blogs’. Alternatively, any search done through Google News or Google Blog Search or Google Groups will give you the option to sign up to email alerts or, for the first two, an RSS feed.

Flickr feeds, tags and clusters

For anyone who needs images or needs to talk to photographers, Flickr allows you to subscribe to feeds by individual photographers, or to particular tags (you’ll find them at the bottom of each page).

But the site’s real strength is its social features. A simple search will bring you simple results – but click on any tag in those results, and you’ll be presented with a tag cluster (see image below). This draws on user behaviour to suggest other tags you might be interested in, as well as omitting irrelevant results. You can click through to results from the cluster, generate another cluster from another tag, or go to results from an individual tag. From there you can rank results based on recency or – another social feature – “most interesting”.

And of course you can see a tag cloud of the most popular tags at the moment – a good way of getting a feel for the zeitgeist.

If you’re more interested in people than pictures, clicking on any photographer’s profile will allow you to see their ‘contacts’ and groups, while you can browse profiles based on interests and other biographical information (you can also search groups and people).

YouTube feeds/related videos

Like Flickr, YouTube is a social beast. Click on any video and you’ll be presented with related videos; click on any user page and you can see who they subscribe to. You can rank results by how users have rated it, or how many times it’s been viewed. And you can click on a video’s tags to browse through content that way. The site also hosts a number of groups under the Community tab.

In addition the site offers numerous feeds – a list of the main ones, plus instructions on how to create feeds for individual users or tags, can be found here.

Technorati feeds, fans and tags

You’ll see the orange RSS icon throughout Technorati – you can subscribe to headlines and ‘rising posts and stories’, and filter by ‘attention’. You can subscribe to results from a particular search, or a specific tag (a motoring correspondent, for instance, might subscribe to search results for “Longbridge plant”, or the tag ‘Ford’). You can even subscribe to blog reactions to a particular site.

Equally impressive are the social features. Search results are presented with recommended tags you might also want to click on; blogs and posts are ranked by ‘authority’ (numbers of reactions); and you can see which Technorati members have declared themselves a ‘fan’ of a blog – then browse through the other blogs they’ve ‘faved’.

And like Flickr, you can get a flavour of “what’s percolating in blogs now”.

LibraryThing feeds and tags

Finally, it’s worth noting the social and RSS features of books community LibraryThing. As well as the traditional author and title fields, the search facility allows you to search by tags, members, groups and talk messages. You can then subscribe to a feed of results for that search, or to a feed for a particular member, group or tag.

It’ll come as no surprise that the site also offers related tags and members whenever any search is made, while the site’s groups offers one way to find leads and contributors.

coComment feeds, groups and tags

coComment is a service which tracks your comments for you, so people can subscribe to a feed of comments you make on other sites, or communicate with you directly. This has obvious applications for journalists – if you find someone in your ‘beat’ who is a good source of leads, you’re going to be interested in their comments, and what they’re commenting on. If they’re a member of coComment, you can subscribe to their feed. If not, a flattering email suggesting they check it out might be required…

Aside from the feeds there are plenty of social elements at coComment – you can browse tags, look at popular ‘conversations’, join groups, or browse commenters themselves.

Some journalists might think it’s too early for coComment to be useful to them – at first glance, most ‘conversations’ appear to be in the technological sphere – but getting in there early and spreading the word could give you a significant advantage as the technology spreads.

All this, however, is only laying the foundations for having your ‘ear to the ground’ – saving yourself time through use of RSS, and generating contacts and engendering serendipity through social media.

No doubt I’ve omitted some RSS and social service-providing sites (for example, other RSS readers, while a social podcasting service must be out there) – and overlooked some tricks on the above sites. I’d love to know your recommendations and tips.