Universal McCann has released a new report on the impact of social media (such as blogs, social networks, online video) on the media landscape. It surveyed 17,000 Internet users worldwide in March 2008. The report found that social media, in particular blogs, are “becoming a more important part of global media consumption for internet users than some traditional media channels.” The report also found that social media is a global phenomenon (29 countries were surveyed), although there are cultural differences in how people use it.

The report states that “video clips, blogs, podcasts, social networks and RSS are all essential components of the online media diet.” Here are some of the key findings:

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If you haven’t seen it already take a look at Piwik, an open source analytics package that is designed to compete with the ever popular Google Analytics. Open source has always had a strong blogger following, and Piwik has seen a huge increase of traffic due to bloggers posting on the release of their software.

While it is too soon to say that Piwik will replace Google Analytics (the current top free tool available), it does boast a lot of impressive features. Some of the more interesting are:

• Ability to build your own plugins (think of the possibilities!)
• Fully customizable interface
• Data is fully stored on your own server

Keep your eyes posted for more information. The ability to develop plugins, integration, and other API’s will allow some strong possibilities for monitoring and drawing conclusions from data that has been aggregated.

No matter what your blog is about, no matter what you plan to use it for, you should always find and learn as much about the people who will read and respond to your blog as possible. This is with out exception, and is an integral part of the success of any blog. Regardless if you are trying to entertain people, communicate with people you know, or reach out and discuss a topic or express your brand. Even if the blog is specifically for your own personal reading and reflection, you must think about what you want to get of the blog.

Ultimately your readers are your customers, and your blog is your brand. Each post is a product. To really engage people, get them interested, and keep them coming back you must understand them. By understanding them and figuring out what they want is the only way to craft a product that they enjoy. If they enjoy your product they will return, participate in the conversation, give you feedback and tell others. Each post should reflect back to those readers, your target market.

I could go deeper in how to use the information obtained by finding and researching your target market, but I will save that for a later post. Instead I will discuss how you can go about determining your target market and how to research them.

Step 1, who would be interested?

The first step is take a look at who do you want to talk to, who is going to be interested in the subject in which you are talking about. What can they benefit from it, and how will it in turn benefit you? If you can find or think of anyone who would be interested, or any way for the blog to be mutually beneficial then you might want to reconsider the topic.

If you are talking about food, who with in the vast subject of food interest would read the blog? Chiefs, hobbiests, home makers, or just people who dine out?

What age bracket are they? If they are people who just enough a nice meal, are they cooking for themselves, or are they cooking for their family?

Where do they live, would that influence what type of content they would be looking to read?

Step 2, hone in on them

After you have developed an profile of the reader, it is critical to learn more about them so that you can use that information to shape every blog post (or product) and the overall brand of your blog.

There are plenty of ways to do market research to learn more about a target market. However blogs themselves actually provide a great way to research people with in your market. Using tools like Technorati you can easily find thousands of blogs on any given subject.

Subscribe to any blog that fits your profile, and spend time reading through their new posts, previous posts, and comments. You will quickly learn what content is valuable to the author, and to the authors reader base.

Make sure to catalog any findings so that you can quickly refer back to the data you have collected and use it to shape your product. Knowing that most young professionals who blog about your topic are interested in topic X will help shape any blog post designed to engage them.

Step 3, Ask away

After you have defined a profile and found people who fit that profile. I encourage you to reach out and contact these people. Be completely open and honest, and if you can offer them a gift for their valuable time. See if they would be willing to answer a quick survey in which they discuss what types of content they would like to see, what sites they spend their time on, and what other blogs they read.

This has multiple benefits, as not only does it give you the chance to establish a relationship with the other bloggers in the space; but it also gets first hand market research and valuable information about what topics, sites, and content is important to the people you are looking to communicate to.

After these three steps you should have a very clear idea of who your audience is, and data that backs it up. This data and information should be woven into every step of your strategy. Write every post with these initial findings in mind.