Does a blog influence buying behaviour?
This simple question is at the crux of social media – after all why should anyone bother spending their increasingly limited time and resources trying to influence what a blogger writes if what they say has no impact.
Which begs two more important questions…
- Firstly is there any proof that a blog can influence behaviour (specifically where it counts for many firms – i.e. procurement)
- And secondly, how do I identify which blogs have the power to influence?
Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group ran a survey to find out what people thought of his blog. Anecdotally, you may think that seeing as Jeremiah has a huge audience that regularly comments on his posts, it would presume that his blog does indeed influence. Unfortunately for me, firms do not commit budget to presumptions so research like this is fantastic.
These are some of the results:
What can we learn from this?
- Jeremiah’s blog influences action internally to a large degree
- The correlation to actual buying is mostly equal for and against.
The fact that there is any link between the blog and procurement is a massive validation point. Obviously we are taking people’s words for this and it would be excellent to have credible evidence to back this up, but this in itself is a huge factoid.
They point that I keep trying to remember is that in the buying cycle, the people who are closest to the money have the greatest level of importance. Some argue that the media and analyst industry help to create buzz about a need or even a shortlist, but it is the (very few) people at the top that hold a significant amount of weight. This is why influencing these influencers is of paramount importance.
To my second point regarding how do I indentify which blogs are important – there are tools (such as BlogLevel) but this is part of a greater theme that I cannot do justice in this post alone.
A few additional facts about the survey on the methodology:
- Survey fielded through Web Strategy blog, using SurveyMonkey
- Conducted from Nov 30 – Dec 12, 2009
- 19 questions total – 15 multiple choice, 4 open-ended. Specific questions about Altimeter Group and contact info are not included in the attached sample data.
- 195 respondents – 100% of data clean
There are several other points that this survey found that are interesting but not directly related to this post’s title. However, as I have often said:
…what Jeremiah as also found regarding technical know-how fascinates me. Taken with the caveat that the people who read what is on his blog have an interest in what he says, the market skew is not a representation of the world en masse. However, it is fascinating to find that both many firms social media and mobile strategy are in their infancy. I guess 2010 may see a change to that model.
I am sure that Jeremiah will publish his own take on this survey but my thanks to him for giving me an advance copy of the results to draw my own conclusions on.
Filed under: analyst relations | 6 Comments
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Technobabble 2.0 
A couple of points
– The survey is only among the most active and advocating of Jeremiah’s readers; the non-response bias should be considered significant
– Using 1dp on a sample of 195 is totally spurious and attempts to give the results an undeserving degree of legitimacy
– Chart 14/15 might be fairly interesting, but what would be better would be considering those results among those that claim to have any influence on the strategy – those with more time to engage in and with blogs are likely to be the junior members
Despite my criticism, I do appreciate your efforts in blogging this
Simon
Thanks Simon. all good points
I agree, this survey is really a sample of “Those that are engaged in the Web Strategy blog”. You’d be surprised, traditional research firms have sample “N” sizes smaller than 100 sometimes.
I have data on the type of people who answered, and their roles, titles, and companies they work for. I will post that on my blog in the near future –stay tuned.
Simon
I posted the details of the survey, and some additional thoughts on the methodology, thanks for the comment.
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/12/30/who-reads-this-blog-find-out-with-2009-web-strategy-survey-results/
Agree with Simon on all his points. And another thing – solipsism, anyone?