In this part of the Global Blogging Survey I asked some personal information about yourself. The aim was to get an idea of the sorts of people who blog, and to see if the “young male geek” stereotype was true.
More Bloggers Are Male Than Female
To be honest I was expecting the male/female balance to be more even. Many of my clients, twitter and blogging contacts are female, and I see more female bloggers now than I ever have. While I did expect males to be higher, I never anticipated it would still be to this degree.
| Gender |
Count |
| Male |
560 |
| Female |
303 |
| Rather Not Say |
46 |
Most Bloggers Live in USA
USA still clearly has the lions share of bloggers. What you can’t see in this graph are all the countries with two or three bloggers responding. I do know that blogging is increasingly popular in non English speaking countries, so perhaps my readership skews? One to watch over coming years I think. My prediction is USA will lose the crown before long.
Most Bloggers Have Higher Education
I fully expected bloggers to be an educated bunch and this proves it to be the case, kind of. Obviously this is my readership, which does not necessarily mean all bloggers fall into these groupings. You might be surprised to learn that while my readers are heavily in the “college and university educated” group, I myself never went to university. I left school as soon as I could, at age 15.
How Old is the Typical Blogger?
What would you guess at the average bloggers age? It seems there are as many bloggers over 40 as there are under 30.
Summary
Are bloggers male American teenagers and students? Seems like while a portion could well be, bloggers do not fit tidily into that stereotype and are in fact a pretty diverse bunch.
If you think that many bloggers will attract an audience a lot similar to their own demographic, this information shows there is quite a market for variety of people. It will be interesting to see not just a snapshot but a trend.
Blogging survey results, as promised! Even though we didn't quite get to the magic 1,000 mark once junk entries were taken into account, I am going to start rolling out my survey results. Hopefully I will be able to get through them before my vacation so I can incorporate any feedback required to make ...
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Last week I mentioned my Global Blogging Survey and your chance to win one of 10 ProBlogger books. Well we are just over half way to the magic 1000 submissions mark, can we get some more?
If the total can get to 1000 or more then the results will be more reliable and statistically “ok”. It’s always better to draw conclusions from a good base rather than infer something that might not be based on anything real.
As well as 10 books I am going to sweeten the pot. One lucky submitter will receive a blog critique right here on this blog outlining all the advice you need to take your blogging to the next level.
So if you haven’t filled in the survey, please do it now. It takes mere minutes. Tell your fellow bloggers. Bring friends!
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While of course I am happy to be home with my family there is a part of me that is already missing the people of SOBCon. I am full up with a cold now, some strange foreign nasty I picked up on my travels, but even so I am on a high.
The subtitle of the conference should have been “Hugfest 2008″. I have never had the quantity and quality of hugs from so many people. This will be one of my enduring take aways and I am deadly serious. Until the internet can deliver a hug experience, ie. an unmistakable and deep human connection, we will need to keep going to events such as SOBCon (especially SOBCon).
Liz told me what to expect but of course the reality can never be done justice with words, it has to be experienced.
As far as learnings, my head is still buzzing. Every single person I met gave me a new, fresh and invigorating perspective. There are people using this social media stuff for everything from adversity, to parenting to health. We had an expert on making sales coming from the other direction and wanting to make community, and we had the guys with community asking how they can make sales without losing the trust of their audience. A lot to process. I am sure there are lots of reports popping up all over and I will try to link to some in a future post.
One thing is for sure. You have to make SOBCon09.
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Well I managed to arrive in one piece and thanks to Terry Starbucker, got to my hotel safe and sound too!
50mins after checking in we were back out to meet the rest of the early arrivals over beer and italian food.
What have I learned so far?
- Lots of people are just as shy as me but everyone is completely great company and just like you imagine them from their online persona’s (a good sign of things to come)
- I seem to be the only person sans business cards
- Chicago is a great city and I wish I had taken my proper camera out right away
- Never leave home without network cable and USB leads, I can’t get reliable wifi or download my DSLR pics – d’oh
- Bloggers are not very good pool players
- Guinness tastes different here
- It really is all about people, regardless if we are talking about “social media”, blogging, or “social networks”, just like soylent green, it’s all people
OK, not exactly startling revelations but the program proper doesn’t start until the boat trip tonight 
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As you read this I will be either on my way to Chicago for SOBCon, or landed and trying to recover from jetlag, depending on where in the world you are right now. Hopefully one of the two, I am trying not to think of the unfortunate alternative scenarios!
I am excited and nervous, and not just about the usual long haul travel logistics. It’s a while since I attended any event like this, let alone speak at one. Pretty well out of practice. But, we have to keep pushing ourselves beyond our comfort zones and the program looks a lot of fun. There is even a boat trip with a gang of boozed up bloggers to look forward to. You can be sure I am taking my camera and video phone to that 
One thing few people know about me is how shy I am. You know when people are afraid of spiders they go to the zoo to hold tarantulas? And if you are afraid of flying you can book a special “fear of flying” trip in a jumbo? When I started my career I was so introverted I took a teaching course to get over it.
I went from being unable to order a big mac without blushing and stuttering to talking to packed auditoriums. I found I actually enjoyed teaching, it was the most satisfying thing I had ever done.
Now I am in a “feel the fear and do it anyway” kind of place. I will sweat and shake but get a big kick out of it too.
For this event I have decided against bringing business cards or anything like that. All the attendees get a copy of our ProBlogger Book, so I figure that is a more business card than I need!
The aspect I am looking forward to most is meeting all the speakers and attendees. Chatting virtually is great but nothing beats actually meeting in person, even if I fully expect one or two of the harassed organizers to want to shake me by the throat rather than the hand
For all the people attending, I look forward to meeting you, please do grab me when you see me! For those who are not watch this space for my conference report
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