Taking The Pulse Of The Healthcare Blogosphere
Earlier this year, my firm Envision Solutions and The Medical Blog Network launched the first global survey of healthcare bloggers. Today, we released the results of this poll, which will be discussed during the Healthcare Blogging Summit this afternoon in Washington DC.
Following are some key results of this survey:
- Many bloggers are writing for altruistic or personal reasons, i.e., to share their experiences or educate others
- A number of bloggers hide their identity to protect themselves, friends, family, patients and careers
- Many respondents view their fellow bloggers’ statements with a critical eye. However, they are confident most bloggers will make it easy for them to access a range of perspectives via their blogs
- About half of those contacted by PR professionals write posts based on information they receive from them
- Respondents are split on whether running advertising compromises the integrity of healthcare bloggers. However, many are willing to invite advertisers to appear to their blogs
Click here to download the full results of this survey.
December 11th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Hopefully the bloggers who reproduce propaganda fed to them by PR professionals also go the extra mile to find the stories that don’t have a PR department resources behind them.
http://corphq.livejournal.com
December 11th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
[…] One challenge with influencing healthcare bloggers in particular is this: Almost 40 percent blog anonymously. This was one of the findings of Fard Johnmar’s new study on the healthcare blogosphere which he shared at the conference. Directly correlated, in my personal opinion, is another of Fard’s finding: The majority of bloggers have a low to medium level of trust in their peer healthcare bloggers. They do seem to trust that their peer bloggers will encourage active and unbiased conversations on their blogs (begs the question: if you don’t know who they are how do you know they are unbiased?). […]
December 12th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Gadfly:
Thanks for your comment. Please see my note on HealthCareVox.