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39 percent - 57 million adults in the US - now read blogs.

While the new report from Pew Internet focuses on who is blogging, it does report that the number of American adults reading blogs more than doubled since February 2004 and is signiifcantly up since the Fall of 2005.

Most bloggers report that they have a small audience. Only 13 percent said they get more than 100 hits a day. Nice to know I fall into that 13 percent.

Of course hits is not the metric I would have asked for - unique visitors is the thing to count. And as they pointed out, exact measurment of all your traffic to a blog can be tricky because of the RSS feeds. RSS metrics is still a very inexact science.

What does astound me is the number of diverse people I speak to who say "I read your blog."

It is amazing how fast you can build up an audience if you write relevant content and offer information that resonates with others.

A recent Jupiter Research report stated that many large companies (those with over $50 million in sales a year) are planning to start a blog in the next six months. It makes perfect sense to me - already almosot 40 percent of Americans are reading blogs and the number grows every day.

So what makes a successful corporate blog?

• Knowing who your potential audience is
• Figuring out what content would attract them
• Being passionate about that subject
• Providing excellent content they can't get elsewhere - keep them coming back
• Be williing to have an open two-way conversation with your readers
• Provide an open online platform where they can be a part of the conversation

You may be suprised at how fast your readership will grow. Yes, it does take time to create a good corporate blog, but it can be amazingly effective.

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Sally is the author of Website Content Strategy blog: Information about the shifts in media consumption and the use of
technology in marketing and PR so business can stay in touch with
their rapidly moving audiences.