People around the world do trust the media, but to varying degrees. According to TNS, the good news, for Internet content producers, is that people now trust the information they get from online news—roughly to the same degree as news from television and information from friends. On a global basis, the most trusted information source was friends, with 42% of those surveyed saying that they trusted word-of-mouth recommendations. About an equal number trusted TV news (41%), online news (40%) and newspapers (39%).
Blog readership has grown 300% in the past four years, and what bloggers read, strongly influences their purchase decisions. This according to a BuzzLogic-sponsored study titled “Harnessing the Power of Blogs.” This study of more than 2,000 online consumers in the US, was conducted by JupiterResearch.
Here are some key facts to highlight from the study:
Blogs influence purchases: One half (50%) of blog readers say they find blogs useful for …
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of CMOs and marketing execs say their ad budgets will decrease because of the troubled economy, but more of their money will go toward interactive marketing than before, according to a survey from Epsilon.
About the same amount (63%) of the 175 CMOs and marketing execs surveyed report that their spending on interactive/digital marketing has risen, while 59% report a decrease in traditional marketing spend.
The nice thing to hear is that 94% of those surveyed agreed with the statement, “A tough economic period is precisely the time when marketing plays a key role.” This falls in line with my personal belief that it is key to be marketing in down economies for two reasons, first because the odds are your competitors will reduce their budgets and two, because consumers still need to consume no matter what the economic conditions.
The Washington Post published a great article on how marketing has moved to the blogosphere. Here is my favourite excerpt followed up by my thoughts.
“Kathleen Matthews who heads global communications at Marriott International, came up with the idea for chief executive Bill Marriott’s blog. He saw it as a good way to communicate. “That’s the importance of public relations, of advertising, of everything we do,” Marriott …
What a great blog idea, Weatherlicious is focused on distilling complex weather information through the use of cartoon imagery. Simple, to the point, entertaining. As an example, take “Global Warming” as seen below from the perspective of the sun.
There are some great cartoons on the blog …
Working in a creative environment is great. People here at the office are able to spin concepts and ideas into tangible campaigns and programs, making positive impacts on client’s business results. Other than showing creativity through client work, how can an agency express the individual talents of their staff? Or is that something that agencies want to do?
The Barbarian Group has an …
Trendpedia is an interesting new site I have found. Simply put, it seeks out trends in the blogosphere. It’s basically a simple search engine which scans for trends in blog posts and then composes graphs, called Trendlines, giving you a clear visualization of what’s hot on the internet. You can search via keywords or phrases. …
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