The 2009 Women in Social Media Study conducted by BlogHer, iVillage, and Compass partners revealed some very interesting habits of women as far as the use of blogs and other forms of social media are concerned.
The study reveals that 55% of women make use of blogs in some manner or other such as posting comments, publishing articles, reading articles ands so on, while about 53% of women make use of social networks.
Interestingly, however, it was found that most of the women who use social networks, (75% of them) do so only as a means of communication, to keep in touch with family and friends, rather than as a way of collecting any kind of information.
On the other hand, blogs are used by women mainly as a source of information or advice regarding the purchase of some product etc.
Thus it seems that most women use different aspects of the web for their personal lives and for other business like decisions.
Since women are believed to be responsible for almost 85% of purchasing decisions in the U.S. this information is something which advertisers and marketers should take note of.
Also about one third of the women surveyed prefer to remain with one single social network, and surprisingly only about 20% of women were found to use Twitter, while the women who blog also use other forms of social media.
Apparently, women are now using traditional forms of media less than before. 30% are watching less TV, 31% are using the radio less, 36% are reading fewer magazines and 39% are reading fewer newspapers.
This change in habits is significant as at least 45% of women said they made purchase decisions of certain articles after reading about them on blogs.
Female bloggers are also in the habit of sharing their good and bad purchase experiences on blogs, hence sales persons and advertisers would do well to pay attention to their women customers.
Read the full 2009 Women in Social Media Report
(1.9MB pdf)
