number trois

Hey again, this is my third post and basically I’ve done some research which I know you will all think, “boring” but I promise I’ll try to keep it interesting. I have conducted some interviews and a focus group to get other people’s opinions instead of just mine which has helped a lot. In the focus group I asked similar questions to the ones I asked in the interview:

1)      What is everyone’s favourite type of blogs?

2)      What is everyone’s favourite blog?

3)      How often do you read blogs?

4)      What reasons make you enjoy reading blogs?

5)      Is there any blogs you know to avoid and why?

6)      What blogs are the most known?

7)      Do you think blogs are more focused on gaining the sponsorships or advertisements?

8)      If so, what makes this noticeable?

9)      What do you think makes a blog readable?

Question 1 got a few different answers, humorous blogs was a big one. Beauty blogs was a close second just because the beauty industry is huge now.

Question 3 got the same answer mainly, not often. I can understand that though because people don’t have that much spare time nowadays but they usually flock through blogs when they are bored.

The answers did vary which made it more interesting.  When it came to question 4, people struggled to think. What reasons do make people want to read blogs? Well I was told that curiosity is a big reason. Another reason is that blogs are more authentic than plain articles, the fact that people can relate and agree with certain feelings that other people feel. Some people weren’t even sure why they were reading them, they just felt drawn to them through boredom.

I’m not going to tell you what I got for number 5 as some of the responses were a bit mean..

Question 7 is important for my investigation because that is the overall question I need answered. Most of the people I asked weren’t too bothered about sponsorships or advertisements. They were so used to them on other websites that they aren’t actually noticed. A few of the people that were asked couldn’t stand advertisements while they were reading posts just because it distracted them and wanted to then go buy things from that advertisement which in a way has worked for that business but could be seen as a nuisance to someone just trying to relax and read a post so these people that felt this way thought that blogs are now starting to focus more on gaining a sponsorship or advertisement deal but the bloggers aren’t to blame especially if they are trying to make a career out of it but they were more enjoyable before this. I’ll go into more detail on this next week, this is just a brief explanation.

If anyone wants to answer the questions in this post, please comment your answers, it’d be a great help. Try give me some blogs to look at and I can give my feedback and opinion on them.

IMO

Hey everyone, this is my second blog post and I thought for this one I’d maybe give my own opinions on the topic and maybe talk a little bit about blogs in general also.

The definition of a blog is “a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group that is written in an informal or conversational style.” Obviously this definition isn’t the only one and can be branched out into so much more. There’s probably a lot of people who still don’t even know what a blog is but I can admit myself that I didn’t read a single blog up until about 2 or 3 years ago and it was the main gossip ones that I used to read. I now sort of flick through different ones just to see if I find one I like to read (usually funny ones) but this is where it sort of links back with the title about sponsorships or advertisements taking over blogs and sort of sucking the enjoyment out of it. It is a difficult point to get valid opinions on because I don’t think a lot of people particularly care because why would they? At the same time, it can make blog posts feel less personal and make people feel like products or services are being shoved in their faces when it isn’t really necessary. On a list of the top 15 blogs, (http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/blogs) Huffingon Post is number one and if you have a look on it you’ll see that there isn’t really advertisements or sponsorships. It’s just full of content and I think that is a good thing because it doesn’t distract readers from their posts.

Also on the top 15 list is Perez Hilton’s blog. I can put my hands up and say guilty as charged that I’ve read some of his stuff a fair few times. This is an example of a blog that does have a lot of advertisements and sponsorships. This is a power based blog so this means that it is primarily focused on gaining power and money through advertisements and sponsorships, it’s a blog that doesn’t really have a personal feel to it in my opinion. What can I say? Everybody’s opinions are going to be different, some may agree with me and others will feel the complete opposite but let me know in the comments what you think about it.

Something that has changed in the blog world is that now they make social media account to get the word out about their blogs and to communicate with the public and I think promoting through social media is one of the best ways because it is a modern world and people are on their phones/laptops/tablets every single day and people do pay attention a lot of the time so I think bloggers are doing the right thing taking advantage of that because it just makes sense.

I’ll be back in a few weeks with a more informative blog post as I will have gathered some more research to back up different points! Let me know what you guys think in the comments and give me some suggestions of blogs to check out!