Audience

This week we've been asked to learn more about the potential audience for our Beat Blog and about finding other blogs covering similar or related topics. There were a few steps to the exercise. I've scribbled a bit about what I found below.

I mostly confirmed something that I already suspected - Energy efficiency is not as sexy as renewable, alternative, or green energy and is not a hot topic. It is the cheapest and most sustainable form of energy around, but it is not where the big money or powerful people tend to play. It is mom and apple pie, but is considered less valuable or interesting than capital projects that involve large investments, fancy financing, design and construction jobs, and debate about cost/benefit.

I also discovered that static pages seem to be the communication method of choice for those who are interested in efficiency (i.e. Energy Star program, US Dept of Energy, utilities, ACEEE, etc.). For whatever reason, blogging about energy efficiency is not widespread.

My intial interpretation is that the field may be wide open for someone like me to develop, or that there is a true lack of interest, or that the way to develop an audience for efficiency is to embed it along with related topics like green building or corporate energy strategy. Given the absence of bloggers, it doesnt look like there are many to learn from or to develop relationship with.

If I were to take this topic to a larger scale or make it my "brand", it would be helpful to choose a focus (residential or commercial, efficiency or green energy in general, design and building, etc.). My ideal audience would flow from this key choice.

Some details:

1. Twitter search on blog keywords. I searched on energy, energy efficiency, and energy conservation. Search findings brought up the fact that several tweeters were covering the release of several big reports about energy efficiency and the economy. The reports are interesting and may form the basis of future blog posts and study. A quick summary is that market investment in cost-effective energy efficiency is nowhere near its potential, conservation is the cheapest source of energy and is readily available (around 8% of US energy use or 3 trillion kilowatts. One key impediment has to do with upfront financing. Various scalable finance models are evaluated.

2. Google search keywords to find related blogs. I found this exercise interesting. Searches on energy, energy efficiency, energy conservation, and a few others found many articles, but very few blogs. And the blogs that do focus on energy efficiency, seem to fall into a couple categories

• News about business ventures, funding, and big sales (i.e. " abc corporation plans to install xyz corporation's energy management software, anticipates millions in savings over the next 5 years").
• Blogs of interest to penny pinchers (i.e. "what is the cheapest laundry detergent" might lead to a discussion of how most of the cost of doing laundry comes from heating the water).
• A tiny number of blogs sponsored by utility energy conservation programs.
• A tiny number of blogs sponsored by companies selling weatherization and HVAC equipment.
• Blogs about something else, with a post or two that discuss energy efficiency.

3. Use sites like Quantcast, Alexa, Technorati, and Google Reader to look at their stats and compare to my own. Of these, Technorati was the most useful for my purpose of finding related energy efficiency / green energy blogs and posts.