BLOGABILITY

Via Sacred Facts, I've taken a peek at the Edelman corporate guide to the blogosphere. Some very provocative stats. I had no idea Japan was so far ahead in the game: 74% of people there read blogs, as do 91% of the country's so-called "influencers". The figures for Britain are 23% and 35% respectively, for the USA 27% and 34%. I'd have expected the transatlantic gap to be much, much wider than that. Or perhaps the raw data tells only half the story.

One more startling nugget:

The Guardian Web site, which gives all of its content away for free, had 12.9 million unique visitors in March alone, and its digital division reported revenue growth of over 41% through online advertising.

Gulp. Looks like I'll have to re-consider that take-over bid I had all lined up... Later, I bounced to one of the blog's listed among the UK's most leading sites, GapingVoid and found myself browsing its "Random Notes" on the fine art of staying afloat in the ether. A few pointers:

• The best way to raise you profile in the blogosphere [besides writing good stuff] is to attend the various conferences; the more, the merrier. I am [at least] fifty times more likely to link to you if I’ve already met you in real life. The other good way is to attend the geek dinners.
• Why aren’t there more women bloggers in the circles I travel in? The answer is a three-letter word, beginning with the letter "M".
• It's tempting to think that people read your blog. Sadly, they don’t. They skim them. So always make your content skim-friendly. Write it with "skimmabilty" baked-in.

That last point struck a chord. When I was house-sitting for Andrew Sullivan, I lost count of the number of irate e-mails from people who just hadn't bothered to read posts properly. Weirder still, quite a few thought he'd actually written them, even though they had my name on them, and it clearly said at the top of the page that he'd "gone fishing". I gave up replying in the end.

Over the past couple of years, I've met very few of my fellow-bloggers, although I did make the acquaintance of PooterGeek last week, and discovered that, yes, he's every bit as likeable and witty in the flesh.

Comments

[PooterGeek]

Thanks for the kind words, Clive; but no, I won't fix your computer ;-)

[Sean aka RWB]

I've been giving away all of my content for free ever since the start -- yet somehow my advertising revenue still hovers around zilch. I'll never figure it out.

And I have a lot more experience with "Greek diners" than with "geek dinners." (Or maybe I'm fooling myself.)