Very few people that are not in my immediate family or who didn't 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 didn't 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 haven't heard anyone call me Julie in years.
Growing 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 we'd 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 green.
Today I suffer from an identity crisis of a different sort. As a co-founder of a "social media" 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 with—marketers—love to confuse blogs and blog networks with social networks, you know, since we look so alike and all.
I understand the confusion; we share some of the same DNA. Both blogs and social networks utilize Web 2.0 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 identical.
My 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 U.S. women. This year we expanded the study to dig deeper into how users use services such as microblogging (e.g. Twitter), message boards, and social networks (e.g. Facebook/MySpace), in addition to blogging. The results were very telling.
The study showed that 53 percent of U.S. 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 (e.g. 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 (e.g. Twitter). It's clear the largest majority of social media users go to social networks, but while a full third of social network members don't 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 objects!
An 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: "for fun," "for entertainment," and "to connect with others like me." However, others indicate very different reasons why users go to blogs: Users are more than twice as likely to turn to blogs "to get information," "to share opinions," "to stay up to date on specific topics," and "to seek advice and recommendations," than they are to turn to social networks for those reasons. The one area where social networks scored dramatically (~50%) higher was, "to stay up to date on friends and family."
Because women use blogs to get information and to seek advice and recommendations it's an exciting environment for brands to seek reviews, talk about product attributes and differentiate their brand.
This data doesn't 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 reach.
Ask us who we, a blogger community and network, compete with, and we'll tell you: television, radio, and print, but not social networks. In fact, in a perfect world we would complement each other on a media plan—social nets would get the word out fast to targeted groups, and blogs would bring home the messaging. One thing that hasn't 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 building.
That said, bloggers don't 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 less-specific or time-critical messaging.
Over time I came to accept, even appreciate, the fact that I'm 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 didn't take it so personally when others didn't immediately recognize it. So, too, will blogs and social networks grow into their unique identities to a point where, like search and email, we won't question their best use.
But for now, we'll still have to insist on wearing different outfits.
As co-founder and President of Strategic Alliances for BlogHer, Jory Des Jardins is an innovator in online advertising, women's media and Internet entrepreneurship. Jory can be contacted at jory@blogher.com.
Read all Jory’s MediaBizBlogger commentaries at Jory Des Jardin - MediaBizBlogger.