marketing trends

Running Head : Blogging

The Rise of Consumer Generated Marketing Content : On Blogging Blogging as a Recent Trend in Marketing Strategy

The turn of a new millennium has paved the way for various changes that have unquestionably stunned the world embodied best with the rise of the internet community known as bloggers . Blog or weblog is a newly made communication tool that has pretty much fascinated the internet community and gained much attention from the corporate world because of its unique encapsulating approach and style . Many companies all over the world , especially

those in technologically advanced nations , have viewed blogging as an substitute to the present conventional communication avenue as demonstrated by an increasing quantity of discussions committed to business such as the Canadian Blogging Conference , Blog Business Summit , etc . Blogs are created for a variety of reasons ranging from customer service to sales and promotions . Authors of blogs also range from ordinary employees to the members of the executive board . A study on `Corporate Blogging Strategies ' by Lee et al (2006 ) was able to examine how companies listed in the 2005 Fortune 500 Companies have attempted to maintain control while supporting employee autonomy in blogging . Harriet Pearson defined `social networking ' as people connecting with each other enabled by new technologies that , like blogs wikis , the web generally speaking , instant messaging , other forms peer-to-peer are enabling people to reach out and connect . Consumers get to communicate with companies in a more immediate style with the use of technology such as in websites , e-mails , chat rooms , blogging and through social networks (Lee et al , 2006

Most Affected Consumer Segment and the Blogging Phenomenon (Demographics , Psychographics and Behavioral Characteristics

Blogs are said to be patronized by net-geners who are `emotionally open to the net and use the internet primarily as a social technology (Leung , 2003 . According to a tracking done by Technorati .com , there are about 20 million blogs as of February 2006 , which was 60 more of the previous year counted by Google in July 2005 . According to Blogging 4 Business , there are over 100 million active members of social networks like MySpace and Facebook . Technorati tracks over 50 million blogs as of 2007 . iTunes podcasts have also contributed to affecting the popularity of TV and radio programs in some countries as well . And each day , 70 million videos are viewed on YouTube , the most recent and biggest attainment in Google 's endeavor to take over the fastest rising section of online business (Kharif , 2004

Many blogs are eclectic , personal diaries recounting vacations , pet behavior and favorite books read . Others convey the blogger 's expertise in some field of endeavor such as tech tips or consumer advice . A small subset of bloggers assign themselves role of news source , analyst and interpreter . Bloggers have become electronic pampheteers , self-appointed editors and commentators who use their own highly selective filter to note , deconstruct , annotate and respin news items produced elsewhere

From an upcoming book by Paul Gillin (2008 , he explained that `Social media will alter...