Via Lois Kelly’s Bloghound, via Marketing 2.0 …
A brief commentary on a recent Forrester survey noting that corporate blogging (to external customers and markets) is often not working out that well.
Personally, I am not that surprised. There is a plethora of writing over the last two years (including some on this blog) suggesting that there’s a lot of adaptation to corporate cultures, management processes and management styles that will be be most useful when moving into a new way of working with information.
This survey does not seem to address social computing inside the firewall. I would be greatly surprised to find a significantly different result, except perhaps where a project or team has indeed migrated to a new way of working.
Using blogs and wikis to good effect in any comprehensive way will, I think, involve a lot of “soft” organizational change.
“The soft stuff is always the hard stuff” … an OD mantra.
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Forrester: disappointment in corporate blogs
A recent Forrester survey of 189 companies found that 38% rated blogging marginal to marketing and 15 % said blogs were irrelevant. My experience is that many who get into blogs have unrealistic expectations, set irrelevant measures and “ROI” goals, and view blogs as a campaign tactic, which they most definitely are not. (Another observation: many quickly run out of things to blog about, often a sign that they’re not passionate or knowledgeable about their field.)
The bigger point is that people today expect a more social, casual style of business communications. In writing style. And in being able to post a comment or talk back.
The value of blogging done right is that it breaks the old corporate speak iceberg. Soon there will no longer be a corporate Web site and separate blogs. Good business Web sites will be blog-like in style and the ability for people to comment.
However, this means that businesses need to be more interesting, provide more valuable content and ideas to people who take the time to go to their site/blogs, have a point of view on trends in their industries, and thoughtfully respond to comments.
It also means that many, many communications and marketing people have to relearn communications skills.
Disappointing but not surprising.