The Pew Internet and American Life Project produce fascinating results that bloggers ought to pay heed to. Blogs, or online journals, are a way for internet users to express themselves creatively or to document their experiences. About one in ten internet users contribute to a blog; one in three internet users read blogs.

Silver surfers creating content

Recent data suggests that some online content creating activities have remained constant over time, while others have shown slight or even significant declines since 2006.  Adults, however, have shown some increases in content creating over the past few years, with most of the increases found among adults older than 30.

Silver surfers flocking to social networks

Did you know that the average internet  user this spring was a 45-year-old female, using it for the purpose of staying socially connected, and that they were strongly attracted to Facebook?  While the stereotype of older users has been that they only log in every so often to look at pictures of the kids or grandkids, that report and the most recent one (Augsut 27, 2010) suggests otherwise.  Silver surfers are flocking to the internet in high numbers and social networking use among Internet users 65 and older grew by a staggering 100 percent in the last year.

References:
How Men and Women Use the Internet
The Changing Picture of Who’s Online and What They Do
Report: Older users flocking to Facebook, Twitter

Older adults and social media

The most recent data in the most recent study Older Adults and Social Media reveals:

• social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled — from 22% to 42% over the past year;
• (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one-in-four (26%) users ages 65 and older now use social networking sites;
• between April 2009 and May 2010, internet users ages 50-64 who said they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn grew 88% and those ages 65 and older grew 100% in their adoption of the sites, compared with a growth rate of 13% for those ages 18-29.

Your audience

All bloggers seek to reach the largest audience they can with news that they have published a new article.  The better blogger knows that targeted readers are the most valuable traffic stream as they are most likely to become regular readers/subscribers. Consequently, determining who the audience is for your partyicular content, where they can be found, and publishing what they want to read is  is important. Visitor tracking and straffic stats provide only part of the picture that assist bloggers to:

1. Know their audience.
2. Determine who is visiting their site.
3. Tailor their content to their audience.
4. React quickly to  emerging trends.

Locating demographic data

Although the data are  specific to the USA, we bloggers can determine the different filters to run this through for our respective countries.  For those who are looking for all survey questions asked in polls and reports, take note that we can search the Pew Internet and American Life Project Poll Database by keyword, topic, or date range.

This is the report for this site obtained from Alexa:

Onecoolsitebloggingtips.com is one of the top 100,000 sites in the world has a three-month global Alexa traffic rank of 54,735, and visitors to the site view 2.3 unique pages each day on average. Visitors to the site spend about 67 seconds on each pageview and a total of five minutes on the site during each visit. Compared with internet averages, the site appeals more to users who browse from home; its visitors also tend to consist of low-income men aged under 25 and over 35. Approximately 55% of visits to Onecoolsitebloggingtips.com is one of the top 100,000 sites in the world are bounces (one pageview only).

Click the images below to view at  full size.

Another site we bloggers can obtain data from is quantcast.com click the image below to view at  full size.

As a website publisher, you can use Quantcast to determine the composition of your own audience. This can help you target your content and attract advertisers. To increase the accuracy of your data, create a free “Quantified Publisher” account and copy a personalized Quantcast tag into your website pages to help gather direct data. Read more: How to Find Website Demographics

Questions for discussion

1. Do you know of any other sites that provide blog specific demographics free of charge?
2. Is your site content attractive to silver surfers?
3. Is the eductaional level of your blog content and the language you use in your articles a barrier to silver sufers?