Blog marketing has gone main stream according to a study by The University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research. The Inc. 500 companies are marketing with blogs, social networking and podcasts at a rate more than double that of Fortune 500 companies. Inc 500 companies are those on Inc magazine’s annual list of the 500 fastest growing privately-owned companies.

What media is important? 121 companies were surveyed and 66% reported social media as playing an important or very important role in business and marketing strategies. Social networking and Blog marketing are being accepted and implemented at a rate far faster then expected.  report.

Companies were also asked about their actual usage of the various types of social media.

1. Message boards  33%
2. Social networking  27%
3. Online video  24%
4. Blogs  19%
5. Wikis  17%
6. Podcasting  11%

What areas are being budgeted for in the marketing budgets? The single largest strategy is blog marketing at (42%) of the responding companies. This was followed social networking (40%) and adding RSS feeds at (37%).

The main reason more businesses are blogging is because the tool costs little or nothing to use, which is attractive to businesses with small marketing budgets. Additionally, it is a good way to be heard and stand out from the crowd.

“Blogs are tailor-made for small businesses, and they are a better tool for them,” said Anita Campbell, editor of the blog Small Business Trends.

Doug Williams, Web Marketing Consultant

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 am and is filed under Blog Marketing, Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.