Why do People Blog?

Blogger Survey 2005 - Analysis (821 Total Surveys)
https://extranet.edelman.com/bloggerstudy/Default.aspx

The number one reason people begin blogging is to establish themselves as a visible authority in their field, according to a study by public relations firm Edelman.

Blogger Survey 2005 lists the above reason as the mindset of 33.8 percent of respondents. A close second, 'to create a record of my thoughts,' is why 31.5 percent of bloggers blog.
Less than five percent, meanwhile, blog to generate revenue.

The survey also presents findings about other blogging-related issues, such as how often people blog (the number one answer was every few days), how bloggers correct factual errors in previous posts (striking through the error and inserting a correction is the most common practice), and several questions relating to trust, e.g. who bloggers trust for product information (other bloggers, overwhelmingly), and how trustworthy corporate blogs are in comparison to those written by individual employees.

Edelman has the results in graphical form at https://extranet.edelman.com/bloggerstudy/.
Unlike most surveys, this one has a lot of valuable information for current bloggers, be they of the corporate or individual ilk, as well as companies considering instituting blogs.

Within the survey there was, by the by, one interesting finding I commend Edelman for revealing: Bloggers trust messages coming directly from a company one percentage point more than if that same message comes from a PR firm.