Influence in the Blogosphere

Technorati released its latest State of the Blogosphere report last week.

RaceTalkBlog's Kyle Austin analyzed the report in detail and his recent blog entry makes a number of important points. He says:

. . . the numbers probably don’t adequately represent the folks that are corporate blogging for the 16% of Fortune 500 companies active in the blogosphere. They most likely have other job responsibilities outside of blogging.

Austin has another interesting observation:

However, while professional blogging is on the rise, the report also illustrates that the “hobbyists” have a voice. In fact, 45% of the 5 million blogs tracked by Technorati have an authority ranking of at least 1. This makes at least a portion of the 72% of hobbyists (with some following) a growing challenge for brands, who must allocate most of their blog relations time for more influential bloggers.

In other words, marketers must identify "hobbyist" opinion leaders in the blogosphere and develop a dialogue with them. These "hobbyists" and their readers are an excellent source of information about markets, customer needs and attitudes, competitive issues, etc.

Don't just think in terms of influencing the influencers--carefully read their blog entries and the comments on those entries and factor that data into your marketing decisions. Who knows what insights you'll discover?