I was spending a little time getting caught up on my blog reading today and as always learned something new from Mike Sansone at Conversations.

He provided some statistics from BlogWorld on blogging that were of interest to me and should be to you as well:

* Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
* More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
* Over 57 million Americans read blogs.
* 1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
* 89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
* 9% of internet users say they have created blogs .
* 6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
* Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
* over 120 thousand blogs are created every day .
* There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
* 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
* 120,000 new blogs are created every day .
* 37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
* 51% of blog readers shop online .
* Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .

If you haven't created a blog yet - chances are you read them on a fairly regular basis. More and more people are looking to the Internet for their news, their research, their entertainment and to take the pulse of the buying public to see what's hot and what's not. Fifty-seven million Americans are reading blogs!

So what's stopping you. Did you start a blog and abandon it because you couldn't think about what to say or who your audience was? Mike's post today offers a great way to outline your blog's purpose. He calls it Blogging Territories. He has created a chart that outlines the What, Who and Why of your blog. It's a great tool.

Make a list of what you are writing about, who you are writing to and why you feel you have something to say or why you want to write about that particular topic. It will help clear your mind and focus your efforts.

Eighty-nine percent of companies surveyed think blogs will be even MORE important in five years. It's a rising trend.

Where are you on the tide?

Deborah Chaddock Brown
Writer