From blog to business. Young women’s new way of entrepreneurship?

Abstract

In a world more connected than ever, we find ourselves calling, texting, emailing, twittering or facebooking each other every single day. The blogs have been introduced and are being used over large parts of the world, also Sweden is under its’ spell. Almost every other girl at the age 15-21 in Sweden writes a blog today and some use their blogs as platforms to create businesses. You can see young, driven female bloggers who start writing a blog and then use the blog to create their own businesses. Our aim with this thesis has been to study and analyze how these bloggers are using their blog as a platform for business. Through interviewing three bloggers of different sizes, ages and with different themes and through collecting text material from two of the largest blogs in Sweden, we have tried to define how these women have used their blogs in order to create business and how they engage in entrepreneurial activities. We have also studied the individuals, the bloggers, the entrepreneurs, behind the blogs and looked upon different attributes which according to our theory are necessary in order to become a successful entrepreneur. In the end of this thesis we have identified some major themes which are necessary for a blogger to become a successful entrepreneur. The importance of networking with other people and the fact that a blog can be seen upon as a virtual CV are the most distinct conclusions we have drawn. The bloggers are also becoming living organizations, carrying around their businesses and their brand wherever they go. Additionally, we have identified some distinct attributes in the bloggers personalities which create good conditions for them in order to succeed as entrepreneurs. The most common attributes we found regarding our bloggers were their willingness to work hard, their lack of fear for failure and their ability to motivate oneself. Do we believe that the bloggers in our study should be called entrepreneurs? Or is this just a common thought, applied by people who are only seeing the top of the iceberg?