Here’s some stats to chew on:

• There are currently 20.8 million blogs that Technorati tracks. That number goes up by a million about every 10 days
• According to this study, 1 in 5 teens publish blogs, and 2 in 5 read them
• The same study above says that 1 in 4 adults read blogs

But here’s the most telling stat: Number of major blog-only marketing campaigns to date? One. And that campaign had such a successful launch that its blog generated over 10,000 unique visitors within the first 24 hours!

Why the disconnect? Blog usage is skyrocketting, so is the number of blogs, and as the results so far from Budget’s blog-only campaign suggest, the marketing potential of blogs is enormous.

So why aren’t more companies tapping this potential? My guess is because they haven’t yet figured out how to control blogs. They want people talking about their products, but they want to determine what they say. You can’t do that with blogs, and companies are struggling to come to grips with that.

Eventually, companies will realize that blogs are here to stay, and they will accept them for what they are. Once this realization and acceptance takes place, then they can decide for themselves whether or not they want to use blogs as a marketing tool. In my mind, it all goes back to companies having a story to tell. Those that know what their story is, and know how to communicate it to consumers, will embrace blogs, and reap the rewards that will follow. Blogs will literally force companies to ask themselves ‘Why would anyone want to talk about us? What story can we tell consumers that is so interesting that they will want to share it with others?’.

Blogs will force many companies to ask themselves some very hard questions. But these are questions that they should already have the answers to.

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