Part III: Technorati - The "how" of blogging

Posted by Katherine Thompson on September 25, 2008 at 3:38 PM

The third part of Technorati's report, "State of the Blogosphere 2008" was released today. We have been covering the release of the report each day it has been released.

Chart: How bloggers attract visiters

The report so far has explored who bloggers are, what they're blogging about, and the role of blogging in their lives. Today's instalment looks at how bloggers work.

How bloggers attract visitors:

Bloggers use a variety of tools to attract readers to their sites including:

* Listing their blogs on Technorati and Google
* Commenting on or linking to other blogs,
* Participating in a blogroll or blog directory,
* Tagging blog posts so that they are more easily searchable.
* Bloggers link to and from other sites -- they have a median of 29 links from their blog to other web sites (with a mean of 3400), and a median of 30 links from other web sites to their blog (with a mean of 4800).

Building loyalty

Half of bloggers attract over 1000 unique visitors per month, with just 5% not tracking how many readers they attract.

Tool Usage

    * Google Analytics is the most common tracking tool (used by 2/3 of bloggers)
    * Sitemeter and Statcounter used by one in five bloggers
    * 42% use more than one service/provider for their analytics
    * Over 100 different tracking tools used

What tools bloggers' use

Time spent blogging

* One in four bloggers spend ten hours or more blogging each week, and about half spend more than five hours weekly on their blog.
* Only 15% of active bloggers spend less than one hour per week on their blog.

Assistance

* Majority of bloggers work alone.
* High percentage have unpaid assistance.
* 1 in 5 have full or part-time staff.

Professional/Authoritative bloggers vs average blogger

The Technorati Top 100 blogs had more than twice as many postings in June 2008 as the next 500. Technorati Top 100 bloggers are twice as likely to post ten or more time daily compared to the next 500, and 14 times as likely than the next 5000. The top bloggers are also more likely to use tags, with news being the most popular tag, followed by music and video.

Tools

* Over eight in ten have a commenting system, archived posts, and have built-in syndication.
* Bloggers generally use seven of the 13 tools listed.
* The majority of bloggers use at least four widgets on their site and two-thirds would include a widget with an ad on their blog.

Source: Technorati

See also:
Part 1: Technorati releases "State of the Blogosphere"
Part II: Technorati, The What And Why of Blogging