Mining Marketing Blogs

Kevin Hillstrom analyzed 188 posts during the first seven days of April from bloggers on Mack Colliers Top 25 Marketing blogs list. He found that bloggers aren't necessarily negative and that we are groping for ways to use this medium.

Having come from the corporate side at Nordstrom and Lands End, he started with the premise "that pundits frequently took potshots at brands and that online comments were overwhelmingly negative." Fortunately his data discipline led to the opposite conclusion and he identified a much more promotional spin among the Top 10 versus 11-25, which might actually explain why they get more attention and more traffic which as also reported on Jaffe Juice.

Here are his key findings:

• 14% of posts are about brand commentary and 6 out of 10 are negative or critical
• Brands were criticized as a whole
• But innovative strategies used by brands were largely complimented
• 22% of posts were about blogging

Kevin also found that in addition to wondering and writing about the act of blogging and madly linking to other marketing bloggers in the hopes of realizing the mythic global continuous, dynamic, real-time idea marathon, marketing bloggers focus on strategic innovation, get wrapped up in the technology flavor of the moment, wax poetic about social networking and web 2.0 and blab about all kinds of things that strike them as useful or interesting but that can't be easily characterized. 

I suspect that many of the top bloggers are just like me; trying to figure out what this is all about and trying to separate whats real from the hype. My rants against brands are not only driven by bad service and bad strategy. I'm trying to see if brands are really monitoring the blogosphere or managing their reputations online. So far none of my victims (American Airlines, WaMu or Duane Reade) have noticed or commented on my beefs.

Many bloggers want to share ideas and concepts, call out cool and interesting things and have a say. They, like me, are trying to find the formula to drive greater traffic, link to blogs with bigger audiences and get themselves heard to see if anyone is really listening. And some of us, see blogging as a way to present alternative points of view and to have an intelligent and vocal "loyal opposition" to the brands, marketers and commentators that currently dominate the scene.