518 CHAPTER 15 E-COMMUNICATIONBloggers are active across social media: they are twice as likely to comment on consumer-
generated video sites like YouTube, and nearly three times more likely to post on message
boards/forums.^143 According to the blogosphere study of Technorati, the leading search engine
for blogs, 38% of bloggers are writing about brands that they love or hate; 65% of bloggers use
social media to follow brands and blogging on these brands is a common activity.^144 Blogs
take the pulse of consumer trends and can build relationships. One of Kryptonite’s popular
U-shaped bike locks had to be recalled and exchanged aft er a blog posting on bikerforum.net
said it could be picked with a Bic pen. Th e story raced through the blogosphere and was
picked up by the New York Times and other big media. Th e product exchange implied a cost
of $10 million for Kryptonite. A South African winery, Stormhoek, made use of blogs to
enter the UK market. Th e founder sent sample bottles to 150 bloggers in the UK with no
obligation to say anything about the wine, but a lot of them ended up writing about it.
By interfacing with the blogosphere, Stormhoek changed the way it looked at its primary
customers (supermarket chains) and end-users (the supermarket’s customers). Simply telling
the blog story to supermarket buyers and importers made the sales process easier and, as a
result, the wine got a 19% share of its category in the UK market and sales doubled from
50 000 cases in 2004 to 100 000 in 2005.^145
Twitter can be considered as a micro-blog but is at the same time a free social network
service. Twitter enables users to send and read users’ updates known as tweets. Th ese are text-
based posts of at most 140 characters that are displayed on the user’s profi le page and delivered
to other users (called followers) who subscribe to it. Tweets can be sent and received via the
Twitter site, via SMS or external applications. On 21 March 2012, Twitter celebrated its sixth
birthday and announced that it had 140 million users and 340 million tweets per day. In
April 2012, Twitter opened offi ces in Detroit aimed at working with automotive brands and
advertising agencies.^146The Belgian Mme Zsazsa (32) is one of the leading ladies in the blogosphere in Belgium and the Netherlands. What
started in 2006 as a result of a new job search ended – via lessons in pattern design – in a blog that won the prestigious
Weekend Knack (Belgian lifestyle magazine) Blog Award in the category ‘personal’ blogs. As creative mother of two
boys, she posts articles on making clothes, gardening, vegetarianism, recipes, trips with the kids, etc., always with
a slice of humour written in her own typical way and decorated with stylish pictures. Over 110 000 surfers a month
read her blog. Nearly 6000 followers are fans of her Facebook page. Last year she started to allow advertising on
her blog, mainly from web shops selling fabrics, clothes and other items aimed at families with kids. In April 2012,
she released her first book on making skirts, which in no time became the best-selling non-fiction book in Belgium
with 38 000 copies sold by June 2012. She now has her own newspaper column.^142BUSINESS INSIGHT
Belgian blogger launches successful bookblogs were started in the late 1990s, but real interest has skyrocketed over the past few years.
By the end of 2011, Nielsen tracked over 181 million blogs around the world, up from
36 million in 2006. Women make up the majority of bloggers, and half of bloggers are aged
18–34; about 1 in 3 bloggers are mums.^141M15_PELS3221_05_SE_C15.indd 518M15_PELS3221_05_SE_C15.indd 518 6/6/13 8:55 AM6/6/13 8:55 AM