There’s an article in today’s Toronto Star that I would like to claim a bit of responsibilty for. As it happens, I emailed the reporter in question regarding the apparent disconnect between the Environics numbers recently released and an earlier Ipsos-Reid poll on the number of Canadians blogging. She called back and we had a nice chat on the phone about blogging. The result?
Depending on whose figures you believe, somewhere between 30 and 40 per cent of adult Internet users in Canada have read at least one blog in recent months.
(I know it’s not much – but I had to run to a client meeting and she was going to call me for a follow-up quote, which sadly never happened).
But I digress. I would also like to add to the above figure the 67.9% internet usage rate in Canada (21-odd million people). So that basically translates into almost one third of all Canadians having read a blog at some point. That’s a pretty steep adoption curve.
In the article was also quoted Bruce MacLellan, president of Environics Communications. Bruce and his firm have been hired to monitor the blogosphere on behalf of one of his clients, and he says
You need to know how blogging is changing your reputation and the way people get information about your products and services.
Bruce? I posted critically about those Environics blogging numbers seven days ago. Not one person from your firm visited this blog after having searched on the word “environics” (though someone from a rival PR firm in New York City did). Just so you know.