Sorting Through the Identity Crisis Between Blogs and Social Networks: Which is Right for Your Brand? - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

Very few people that are not in my immediate family or who didn39t go to high school with me know that I am an identical twin until now This is by design After 17 years of being called Julie by people who didn39t know any better I made an unofficial pact with my sister to not live near her We went to different colleges and live on opposite coasts but we remain close and our lives are still entwined Still I haven39t heard anyone call me Julie in yearsGrowing up my mother made us wear the same or coordinated outfits which to this day gives me dork chills just thinking about it She thought we needed to play off our identicalness that one day we39d learn to appreciate our unique situation The minute we hit puberty we forged different wardrobes She went pastel preppy and I developed a taste for things black and army greenToday I suffer from an identity crisis of a different sort As a cofounder of a quotsocial mediaquot company people love to mistake my company for something it is not Facebook or MySpace It seems that the core group of people I work withamp8212marketersamp8212love to confuse blogs and blog networks with social networks you know since we look so alike and allI understand the confusion we share some of the same DNA Both blogs and social networks utilize Web 20 technology such as RSS and tagging to help users reference content Both are gaining share on traditional media and often compete with each other on media plans However when you look at why a marketer would want to use blogs or social networks you would see why the two are related but certainly not identicalMy company just released the 2009 Women and Social Media Study by Compass Partners and iVillage a follow on to our 2008 Women and Social Media Benchmark Study also produced with Compass Partners The Study explores the online behaviors and preferences of active social media users and compares two different groups of those active users The members of the BlogHer Network and a representative sample of the general population of US women This year we expanded the study to dig deeper into how users use services such as microblogging eg Twitter message boards and social networks eg FacebookMySpace in addition to blogging The results were very tellingThe study showed that 53 percent of US women online actively engage in social media on at least a weekly basis And of that 53 percent totaling 42 million women 75 percent use social networks eg MySpace Facebook 55 percent engage in blogging reading writing and posting comments 40 percent use message boards and forums and 16 percent engage in status updating tools eg Twitter It39s clear the largest majority of social media users go to social networks but while a full third of social network members don39t use any other social media platform bloggers are the most highly engaged and active across all social media platforms from Twitter to Facebook to forums We bloggers love shiny new media objectsAn even more refined slice of the data shows why women engage blogs versus social networks Now here is the nuance that a lot of marketers are not taking into account Some of the top reasons are remarkably similar quotfor funquot quotfor entertainmentquot and quotto connect with others like mequot However others indicate very different reasons why users go to blogs Users are more than twice as likely to turn to blogs quotto get informationquot quotto share opinionsquot quotto stay up to date on specific topicsquot and quotto seek advice and recommendationsquot than they are to turn to social networks for those reasons The one area where social networks scored dramatically 50 higher was quotto stay up to date on friends and familyquotBecause women use blogs to get information and to seek advice and recommendations it39s an exciting environment for brands to seek reviews talk about product attributes and differentiate their brandThis data doesn39t rule out social networks as a useful tool for brand messaging but it does indicate that deeper brand awareness and advocacy is more likely to occur on blogs than on social networks The high adoption rate of social networks implies that they are strong tool for reachAsk us who we a blogger community and network compete with and we39ll tell you television radio and print but not social networks In fact in a perfect world we would complement each other on a media planamp8212social nets would get the word out fast to targeted groups and blogs would bring home the messaging One thing that hasn39t changed since last year in our study users still trust each other more than anyone else Blogs are still the most powerful platform for deliberate influence buildingThat said bloggers don39t always post on your timeframe influence is often slower and less predictable even if more powerful Backing up a plan with media is necessary for driving quicker awareness of lessspecific or timecritical messagingOver time I came to accept even appreciate the fact that I39m an identical twin I suppose that occurred at a time in life when I felt more secure about what I had to offer this world and didn39t take it so personally when others didn39t immediately recognize it So too will blogs and social networks grow into their unique identities to a point where like search and email we won39t question their best useBut for now we39ll still have to insist on wearing different outfitsAs cofounder and President of Strategic Alliances for BlogHer Jory Des Jardins is an innovator in online advertising women39s media and Internet entrepreneurship Jory can be contacted at jorybloghercomRead all Joryamp8217s MediaBizBlogger commentaries at Jory Des Jardin MediaBizBlogger

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Sorting Through the Identity Crisis Between Blogs and Social Networks: Which is Right for Your Brand? - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

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