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Five indicators that 2007 will be the Year of the Corporate Blog

2006 was the year for early adopters of corporate blogs. Based on these five indicators, 2007 is shaping up to be a year in which major companies kickstart their blogging initiatives.

The summer vacation/doldrums have kept me away from blogging for a while. And, I confess, I'm cheating with this post that was in iMediaConnection about a week ago! But in case you missed it there....

Here it is: 

2006 has seen unabated growth in blogs. Just since February, the blogosphere has grown from 27.2 millions blogs to 50.1 million, continuing the trajectory that David Sifry has cited that the blogosphere doubles every 6 months. Companies like Boeing, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Intuit continue to use blogs effectively from high-level corporate communications vehicles to intimate conversations with their customers and other partners.

But these pioneers remain the exception among Fortune 500 companies. Dell is a notable addition to the list of corporate bloggers this year, but today’s count at the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki shows only 30 companies, or 6 percent of the list of the premier companies in the

United States

have public blogs. A Jupiter report in June confirmed that smaller companies surpassed larger companies in their embrace of word of mouth strategies and communication tools.

Recently, I’ve seen 5 indicators that lead me to believe that 2007 will be a breakthrough year for corporate blogging.

Indicator #1: Mainstream industries join the corporate blog list. Nike, Starwood Hotels, McDonald’s, and Wells Fargo Bank have joined the technology and Internet companies who first embraced the blogosphere. Microsoft, Oracle and Google have clear business reasons to adopt new technologies. The fact that these new entrants offering distinctly non-digital products have begun to see the value of blogs will encourage their peers and competitors to join.

Indicator #2: Corporate blogging topics are diversifying. McDonald’s “Open for Discussion” blog presents the fast food chain’s corporate social responsibility initiatives from their employment practices, packaging and purchasing. Starwood Hotels’ “The Lobby” taps a group of travel writers to post items like travel tips, news about new mobile devices, and information about their hotels. Wells Fargo Bank took advantage of the 100th anniversary of the

San Francisco

earthquake (and the role the bank played in helping the city recover) to launch its “Guided by History Blog”. The blog addresses emergency preparedness, and given this year’s extremes of rainfall, temperature and predictions for the hurricane season their choice of topics is very timely.

Many of the early corporate blogs including GM’s “Fast Lane” and Boeing’s “Randy’s Journal” involved executives discussing corporate strategy. Understandably, some companies may not want to take this approach. The range of topics in these new examples will stimulate creative thinking about topics that best fit a company’s goals and strategies.

Indicator #3: Interest in best practices continues to grow. We recently had direct experience with the level of interest in the market for blogging knowledge. Cymfony teamed up with one of our PR agency partners, Porter Novelli, to survey business bloggers to learn more about their experiences with this emerging communication tool. For the webinar presenting the research findings, well over 300 people registered and 82% of those attended! We also conducted a poll of the attendees and while 36% of them currently have blogs, 66% indicated they were at least somewhat likely to have a blog in 2007. In the survey itself, 89% of respondents agreed that blogs will grow in importance over the next 3 years.

Indicator #4: Positive results decrease the Fear Factor. Many companies I’ve talked to are reluctant to engage in the blogosphere for fear that they will receive negative comments and criticism. The results of our research indicate negative experiences are the exception, not the rule. Of the 42% of companies who said a blog post had impacted their company, over 90% said the impact was positive. Three-quarters of respondents further indicated that blogs had achieved their initial goals and cited increased media coverage, web site traffic, and sales leads. The lure of these benefits will bolster blogging while the decreasing fear will fade as a deterrent.

Indicator #5: Social media can be a source of market insight. Just as fear of criticism is subsiding, so is the belief that monitoring the blogosphere is only about detecting potential attacks on the company. The top three reasons for monitoring blogs were to discover emerging trends, gain competitive insight, and to understand the word-of-mouth about their company. Since crises are (fortunately) rare events for companies, alone they are not sufficient reason to devote resources to blog monitoring. But staying in tune with market trends and competitive moves are vital daily activities for companies.

2006 was the year for the early adopters of corporate blogs. Based on these indicators, 2007 is shaping up to be the year that the fast followers will kickstart corporate blogging. This wave will spur greater experimentation with topics, audiences, and formats, leading more companies to jump into the blogosphere.

Will all this change the freewheeling nature of blogs? I doubt it. The blogosphere thrives on diversity of voices. But this time next year the voice of business, currently almost absent from the dialogue, will have a more prominent presence.

Posted by Jim Nail on August 23, 2006 at 09:12 AM | Email this post Permalink

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Comments

Very interesting, Jim, thanks.

Posted by: Easton Ellsworth | Aug 25, 2006 12:08:38 PM

Do you have any data, reports, anecdotes about how small companies can use blogs successfully, especially if their niche is B2B? I keep hearing about this, and wondering if I should implement one for our small software service firm, but I wonder A) what would I do for content, and B) would keeping content fresh prove a worthwhile time investment?

Posted by: Julie Berry | Sep 7, 2006 11:38:01 PM

Thanks for the comment. Be sure to read the survey Cymfony did with Porter-Novelli on corporate blogging which you can download at http://www.cymfony.com/report_corp_blog.asp
Many of the respondents were small businesses and they found their blog worthwhile for both the PR value (getting mentioned in traditional media articles)as well as leads.
The best content is a mix of industry news, commentary on trends you/your company sees and a little bit of company/product news. Posts don't have to be long so it doesn't have to take a lot of time.
Good luck!

Posted by: Jim Nail | Sep 12, 2006 11:04:42 AM

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