At least that’s the implication of a recent article from eMarketer called The Growing Influence of Online Social Shoppers. (You can buy the full report for only $700…)

According to this report, people trust financial analysts more than bloggers. Only 12% of of respondents said they would trust bloggers as a credible source for information about a company.

I have to wonder what this means for our blog networks. Every month, we tell readers take a look at what Zondervan is doing. Or Harvest House. Or NavPress. Or IVP. (Although after IVP’s April Fool’s joke, I’m not sure I trust them anymore!)

Not to worry. It turns out that the true power of blogging may be hidden in this report. Notice the number one source of credible information: “People like themselves.” See, for every Arriana Huffington and Grokdotcom, there are hundreds and thousands of bloggers with micro audiences who know them in the real world. When RealLivePreacher makes a recommendation, I trust him not because he is a blogger, but because he is my friend. Same with L. L. Barkat. Tina Howard. Chris Cree. Gordon Atkinson. Karl Edwards. Dan Roloff. Every Square Inch. Eve. Carl Holmes. Al Hsu. Craver. Mary DeMuth. Heather Goodman. Camy Tang. Merri Destafano. Becky Miller. Robert Hruzek. Abby Dennis. Brandon. Arly (congrats on the baby!) Wendy. And all of my other friends.

And by friend, I don’t mean someone on Facebook who contacted me out of the blue to give them permission to market to me. I mean people I’ve had coffee with. (So if you’re on that list but we haven’t had coffee yet, time’s a-wasting!)

Also, if you’re my friend, go read my interview with the president of Walden Media for the latest scoop on Prince Caspian, Dawn Treader, and The Screwtape Letters.

Lately, L. L. Barkat and I have been pretty busy trying organize everything we know about social media for a presentation at Mt. Hermon. Yesterday, I presented some of what I’ve learned about social media to the San Antonio Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

I promised the AFP people to share the slideshow online. Here it is…
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At FastCompany this month, Clive Thompson asks, “Is the Tipping Point Toast?” He makes a good point that “your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend.”

Why should any readers of GoodWordEditing.com care?

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My good friend, L.L., is coining a new term and using Blogger in an interesting way to build community for her upcoming book: Stone Crossings. I haven’t read the book yet (because it doesn’t come out until April 2008), but I’m excited about the premise.

L.L. first posted about her wog concept at Seedlings In Stone a few weeks ago.

Pretty quickly, several friends pointed out a problem with the word she coined.

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I’ve been emailing Austin Boyd back and forth a bit this week about his blog tour, trying to get his impression of its value. He gave me permission to post his comments here on my blog.

To set the context, Austin Boyd’s book The Return was featured on the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour two months ago. (Go here to read my blog’s Page One review of the book from the tour.) Austin has a little bit of perspective on the event, and I asked him the hard question:

Now that the dust has settled on the CSFF blog tour, I’d be curious to hear how you felt about it.

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This weekend while I was mowing my jungle lawn between the final performances of Midsummer Night’s Dream, I listened to a MarketingExperiements podcast called “Harnessing Social Media - Web 2.0 Grows Up - Free Internet Traffic.”

Yes, I am a supergeek. And I thought I should share some things I learned.

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