When we first began this project we expected to be collecting data within a few months. We got diverted by another study looking at how those in different countries view blogs, but now we are busy chasing down people to fill in our wine blog survey. We have mainly contacted those with wine blogs through email and the response has been quite gratifying. In our message to those with their own blogs we asked them to post our message on their sites and at least three of them have done so. Our message has also been picked up on Twitter a few times. The result is that so far we have 143 complete responses. The study is designed to collect information about people with three different levels of engagement: those who have their own blogs (we call them blog creators), those who read and contribute to others’ blogs and those who only read blogs. So far the break down is 76 blog creators, 52 blog readers and only 15 blog contributors. Obviously we are getting more responses from the blog creators because we address them directly and it appears that a high percentage of them are happy to oblige. The very low number of responses from contributors is a bit puzzling unless most of the contributors also have their own blogs which seems unlikely. In any case we will keep plugging away. Our goal is to have 300 respondents in each category so we have some work to do.
Part of our intention is starting this blog was to engage those who are interested in the effect of social media on the wine industry. From our interaction with bloggers at wine bloggers conferences and the responses to our emails, it is clear that there is a considerable amount of interest in how blogs operate and what makes them attractive. We will try to post an update every week or so to let you know how the study is progressing.
If you haven’t yet completed our survey (there is a $500 draw for those that do) you can access it at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SZ76K86.
