November 7, 2005

A new marketing study analyzes the interaction of blogs used in businesses and how they can help a company better promote its products and services. How do the various interests of business bloggers intersect with the interests of companies?

Should corporate communications professionals reach out directly to bloggers? Are bloggers really that different from many other communications channels? If so, in which way to they differ?

In an attempt to better understand the interplay of the blogosphere and corpoate communications, blog-search engine Technorati and public relations firm Edelman surveyed subscribers of Technorati's e-mail newsletter to study their interaction with each other.

A key finding of the survey is that the blogger respondents are, to a large degree, seeking to position themselves as authorities in their field. That was the number one reason they gave for blogging.

This is in stark contrast to a consumer survey conducted by AOL earlier this year, which found that many bloggers are not using their blogs for gain, either professional or financial, but simply as an outlet. Nearly half said that blogging was a form of therapy for them.

The Technorati survey was mailed to 30,000 subscribers of its newsletter, and promoted on the Technorati web site. There were 821 respondents. AOL surveyed 600 Internet users over the age of 18 who maintain at least one blog.

The Technorati survey found a high number of bloggers had been contacted by companies or PR representatives.

The survey also found a certain level of skepticism about corporate blogs. About half found them at least somewhat trustworthy. But the other half called them only occasionally trustworthy or not at all trustworthy.

The bloggers were far more likely to trust a blog created by an individual employee.

When looking for information about a company, bloggers said they were most likely to trust other bloggers to steer them right.

Source: eMarketer