If you’re still wondering what a blog is, or why your business should use one, it might come as a shock to know that many people have amassed large fan followings and have built great social authority as bloggers. These people are online influencers, and blogger Jeff Bullas recently broke down some hard-hitting data on the impact of influencers amongst business brands today. The report, called “Digital Influence” and drafted by Technorati Media, revealed several fundamental facts about online influencers including:

• Blogs have significant influence on purchase decisions

Bullas explains, “Blogs are one of the top online services to influence a purchase. When making overall purchase decisions, consumers rank blogs third behind retail and brand sites.  Despite this influencing power brands are spending very little on blogging advertising and marketing initiatives with bloggers.”

• Nearly all influencers blog

“If you want to be an influencer you need to blog,” writes Bullas. “Influencers have realized that to have their voice heard on a social web, they need to have a blog. The power of the reach and velocity of online publishing supercharged by social media cannot be underestimated.” According to Bullas, 86% of influencers currently blog, and a third of all influencers said they have been blogging for five or more years.”

• Copy blogs dominates

Infographics, multimedia and photos have important roles in the influence game, but they don’t compete with well-thought out text blog posts. Eighty six percent of successful bloggers’ posts are written, as opposed to an image, or video. Bullas writes, “The magic of the written word is not going away anytime soon it appears.”

• Facebook and Twitter dominate traffic generation

Amongst influencers, the most effective social media marketing tools remain to be Facebook and Twitter. Eighty three percent of influencers post to Facebook at least once a week, and 71% post to Twitter. This crushes all competitors including LinkedIn (27%), Google+ (26%), and Pinterest (18%).

Online influencers are the most effective utilizers of blogs. What have you done to engage blogging influencers with your social media marketing strategy?

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