They didn’t believe me!

I met with a bay area startup last week for a chemistry meeting to discuss how we would approach their business.

We don’t normally work with startups but these guys had a particularly strong track records as individuals so we pulled together what we thought was a cool approach to an interesting business problem (and, by the way, an interesting product offer as well).

Turned out that the chemistry was not that good and they didn’t appreciate the way we tried to differentiate ourselves – you can’t win them all.

However, what really stood out in the meet was that the founder, who made his money in tech, completely dismissed social media as a pillar strategy for the launch. He was adamant that his target, which will be women aged 35+ (with an interest in nutrition, organics and health) would not either blog or read blogs in any meaningful number.

We were so taken aback by his outright dismissal because this tech-smart team simply didn’t get the new landscape and were completely out of sync with the way we are approaching the marketing mix for our clients.

When someone challenges your beliefs so strongly I felt I had to go back and re-look at the demographics.

According to a recent study by BlogHer and Compass Partners, more than one-third (35%) of all women in the U.S. aged 18 to 75 participate in the blogosphere at least once a week. And that number increases if less-frequent visits are factored in. Of those women who are online any amount of time, 53% read blogs, 37% post comments to blogs and 28% write or update blogs, according to the study.

Yes, I’m sure the figures could be challenged by a smart stats guy but if half your audience are reading blogs shouldn’t you at least be considering how to build that in the marketing mix?