New Data on Rise of Blogging in B to B...Kind Of

I've posted here before about the phenomenon of b to b marketing lagging behind consumer marketing in the creation and adoption of new marketing techniques. Blogging certainly fits that bill, as business-to-business enterprises have been much slower to incorporate blogs into their corporate marketing arsenals.

A recently released survey from KnowledgeStorm/Universal McCann sheds some new light on the state of blogging in the b to b space. The operative word here is some. As B to B Magazine noted in its article on the survey, the findings reflect responses from 4500+ people who use KnowledgeStorm's white paper download service. Says B to B, "KnowledgeStorm users are typically IT professionals."

Given the predisposition IT types have to blogs and other online resources, I can't help but think that the data may not be indicative of user trends in the broader business-to-business marketplace.

Having said all that, here are a few tidbits from B to B's article on the survey (I'm quoting directly from the article here):

• 53% of respondents said blogs influence their purchase decisions
• Of the respondents who said they read blogs daily, nearly 69% said blogs influenced their purchase behavior
• 49.8% of respondents said they comment on or contribute to blogs at least once a month
• 70% said they "recommend or pass along content from blogs to co-workers and colleagues" at least once a month