The Online CMO by Philip Hallenborg

In an article titled “Time to rethink your Corporate blogging ideas”, Forrestor Research Analyst Josh Bernoff claims corporate blogs rank at the bottom of the trust scale with only 16% of on-line consumers who read them saying that they trust them. He provides some solid research (below) to support his point. Bernoff continues to say that consumers who say they trust these blogs are the most likely to trust all other sources of information.

Bernoff does not suggest stopping corporate blogging but he maintains that you have to be “strategic about them” meaning “blogs that talk mostly about products often aren’t worth the effort”. Instead “blogs make sense if they demonstrate thought leadership; fit into a larger groundswell strategy with communities, videos, or the like; or allow PR groups to respond to groundswell threats” says Bernoff.

This is quite intuitive. I have previously written about how marketers shouldn’t be tempted to use Social media arenas for traditional advertising and self-interest broadcasting. I would say the same goes for corporate blogging. So in that sense there is nothing new to what Bernoff presents.

To me the real value of Bernoff’s data is actually that bloggers and blog readers tend to rely more on corporate blogs than the general population. This is rather a reflection of user maturity in using social media than anything else. And proof that as usage of blogs increase, a credibility gap will emerge between those corporates engaged in a dialogue and those not.

The purpose of corporate blogging should be to engage. Credibility doesn’t come from the engagement itself but from the depth of engagement (2-way), objectivity, coherence and integrity of the communication.

Similar to listening to someone next to you at a dinner party, you will be happy to find that they are talking to you 1 to 1 and not always to the whole group. Nevertheless, the credibility will come from a set of behavioral aspects and the contents of message. After all, we all know how interesting it is to set beside a self-centered individual who broadcasts a one way resumé of key accomplishments during a three hour dinner.