Shareware Marketing

Only 1% of journalists think blogs are credible but they do read blogs (via backbonemedia).

According to Pew Internet & American Life Project:

The blog-reading audience is about 20% of the size of the newspaper-reading population.

The number of adult readers of blogs is about 40% of the size of the talk radio audience.

Bloggers are often early adopters. Find bloggers who write about your field and let them know about your software. You will get feedback, comments and reviews. Moreover, if bloggers like your software they will spread the word. They will recommend your software.

Here’s an example. This one is not from software industry but it’s still good. ChangeThis relies on bloggers to spread the word (see Bloggers are special):

People are listening to bloggers. Blogging is the populist response to the media hegemony: a sea of independent voices.

People will tell you what they think about your software but they seldom tell software developers what they think about their competitors.

If you don’t know your competitors, you cannot find your position in the market. I constantly monitor Usenet newsgroups for competitors’ names, their product names, URLs, our product names. Moreover, when users ask “how do I do this and that” and our program does exactly “this and that” I recommend out program and explain how to use it.

It does not take much time to monitor newsgroups. You just need a convenient clipping service. I use NetNews Tracker. It searches newsgroups twice a day and sends alerts to my e-mail.