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October 24, 2005What Is The Cost Of Blogging - And What Is The Value?
Bradley Johnson's article in Advertising Age today, "what blogs cost American business," asks an interesting question, how much time do workers spend reading blogs at work?
According to Advertising Age, 35 millions works, one quarter of the workforce visit blogs and spend 3.5 hours on average reading blogs a week. While 25% of people spend their time reading work related blogs, 75% read non-work related blogs. These figures are interesting, especially when put in context with the overall averages for spending time at work reading the web for the population as a whole.
America Online and Salary.com conducted research relating to time wasted at work among 10,044 respondents during May and June, 2005.
44.7% cited web surfing as their biggest distraction at work, whether its blogs or buying a birthday present on the web for a loved one, surfing the web is a big distraction at work.
The America Online and Salary study was described on an SFGate.com article, � Wasted Time At Work Costing Companies Billions,� that stated "Employees say they're not always to blame for this wasted time, however. 33.2% of respondents cited lack of work as their biggest reason for wasting time. 23.4% said they wasted time at work because they feel as if they are underpaid."
In addition I was interested to read this paragraph from the article in Advertising Age, "While blogs are becoming an accepted part of the media sphere, and are increasingly being harnessed by marketers -- American Express last week paid a handful of bloggers to discuss small business, following other marketers like General Motors Corp. and Microsoft Corp. into the blogosphere -- they are proving to be competition for traditional media messages and are sapping employees’ time."
I think we know through several studies that people are using the web during the work week to do personal shopping and keep up with the news, there's nothing new here about the consumption of worker's time by the web in the Advertising Age article. What's new is the identification that people are moving away from traditional media to customer generated media or corporate blogs in their readership patterns. I don't think there's any difference between spending time on blogging and shopping at Amazon.com at work, both activities take workers away from work.
To me the next question to ask is not about the cost of blogging to employers, but the value of blogging to employers. 25% of the blogs read are work related; I'd like to know what value that content provides to an employer. There have been few major studies of American blog readers; I think its time we saw some published to understand the answer to this question.
Posted by johncass at October 24, 2005 9:14 AM
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