Women Who Blog

Since my last post about the need to use exact phrase with quotes "why women blog" to find any useful information, another student in the class located a reference to the "2009 Social Media Study" by Blogher, iVillage and Compass Partners which looks at women's use of social media based on surveys of two different population groups - a general population survey of 2,821 online women (53% of whom participate in social media at least once a week) and a survey of 1008 women from the Blogher network.

Most interesting to me was a chart on page p. 12 which compares the demographic characteristics of women who write blogs or post comments to other people's blogs from the two survey groups.

If look at just the general online population survey, 69% of those who participate in blogging do not have a college degree - which contradicts the stereotype many have of the blogosphere as inhabited by only the highly educated. In contrast, if limit oneself to the BlogHer network, only 30% have not graduated from college - so women who participate in BlogHer are not exactly representative of the female online blogging community.

When asked why they blog, little difference found between the general population group and the BlogHer community. The most frequent reasons given were:

• 76% for fun
• 73% to express myself
• 59% to connect with others like me

In contrast only 22% said they blog in order to "to persuade others/advocate" and 17% "to earn money"