This is the eighth post in a series on corporate blog memes. This one focuses on the number of times distinct blogs that participated in memes by publishing blog posts that linked back to corporate blogs.
A total of 1,553 blog posts were collected from the 299 memes previously identified and these were found to represent 792 distinct blogs. The table below plots the frequency of posts per blog from 1 – 20. It shows that 626 (79%) of the 792 blogs appeared just once in memes. Another 103 blogs appeared in blog memes twice and overall the pattern mimics those seen in corporate posts, meme size and links in corporate blog memes.
Over 95% percent of blogs appeared in no more than three memes which would seem to indicate that there are very few blogs regularly responding, sharing or otherwise spreading the content of Fortune 500 companies. It also deflates the idea that some small group of heavily invested customers or power users are regularly spreading information about any given company.
However, there are a number of factors to consider. It was already shown that only 299 memes were produced from 5,887 corporate posts. In addition, 14 companies accounted for all 299 memes. It is more likely that the lack of responses is because most corporate blog posts don’t produce memes to begin with, at least not through blog posts.
At the time of data collection, the exclusion of blog comments due to complexity was considered a potentially significant omission from memes. In the year since, the rapid growth of shorter, quicker and more distributed forms of social media make the lack of fully-formed blog memes less surprising. It also makes the study of memes by medium less useful.
Confirming the existence of vocal customers or power users and measuring their effect will take a lot of further study across multiple forms of social media. It also assumes the development of suitable tools that are capable of capturing distributed social media keeps pace with changes in social media publishing.
The complete table of data includes outliers values not shown in the chart. Two blogs appeared 187 and 188 times across all memes. In both instances, these blogs posted a (usually) daily summary digest of links and frequently posts appeared in multiple blog memes. For example, a blog on search engines posted a daily digest of links that included several corporate blogs on search and these posts subsequently appeared in all associated memes.
{ 0 comments }
Posted on August 5, 2009
My name is Phillip Baker and this is my personal blog about finding value in a world of free information.