According to Do Blogs Influence Purchasing Decisions? at Christian Marketing, blogs do, indeed, influence buyers. "A recent Technorati study (Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report) found that blogs hold a lot of influential power on purchasing decisions of consumers." "...when bloggers like your book, this influences people to buy it."
I found this incredibly interesting because among bloggers I know there have been questions about whether or not we're just writing for each other. How many books can we read/buy? I've also heard some reservations from writers who've done blog tours as to whether or not they were worth doing.
Perhaps Christian bloggers influence purchasing decisions and others not so much?
6 comments:
I know for sure that blogs influence the books I check out of the library...But being a blogger myself, I have a pretty good idea what books I'm going to buy in a coming year anyway.
I routinely have librarians tell me that they've bought books based at least in part on my coverage at Cynsations. Or brought authors into their schools/libraries or nominated them for awards, etc. It's interesting because I make no pretense of reviewing, but rather feature celebrations and conversations within the industry.
Charlotte--Because of your own blogging?
Cynthia--Interesting point about not reviewing and thus not actually recommending something. I skim a lot of blogs, not reading a lot of the reviews because I know from experience that many bloggers do recommendations rather than traditional reviews. If they're covering the book at all, I can assume they liked it. Many times it's simply the name recognition from having seen titles mentioned at blogs that works for me. I recognize a title in a store, library, used book sale, Kindle sale, and check out the content at that point.
I'll definitely buy books based on recommendations from other bloggers. I've mastered the art of skimming reviews to get enough of an impression of whether I want to read a book, without picking up any spoilers. If I think about it, there are a handful of bloggers whose advice I've come to take more seriously, because the books tend to mesh with my interests. But I also do some of the general recognition that you do, Gail.
I tried to get some feedback at my Facebook page from nonwriter friends as to whether they read book blogs and whether they were influenced by them. No response at all, which makes me suspect that the people I know there don't have much interest in this.
I got a better response from my post about HEPA filters.
In answer to you question Gail--as part of blogging, I pay attention to the new releases coming out, and I look specifically for release information on sequels I know I want. For instance, for my son's birthday I'm going to buy him the sequel to How to Catch a Bogle, which I'll be ordering from Australia, and which I found out about because I knew the author was Australian, and though it might be a possibility. So it's pretty rare that I see a book featured on someone else's blog that I 100% want to buy that I had never heard of before...
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