84% of Corporate Blogs Lack Soul. And Suck
Written on 15th December 2008
3 COMMENTS 
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The Influential Marketing Blog wants us to consider a piece of data that leads a new Forrester Research report (register to download): only one in six consumers (just 16%) trust company blogs. In other words, 84% of corporate blogs today probably suck.
I’m not surprised, most corporate blog I stumble upon are blogs without a soul, but with press releases. Moreover, the pieces of personal PR are often isolated, living a life within the .com domain of the company. No outgoing trackbacks, social media presence, or articles about phenomena outside the safe haven of the offices.
Therefore, Forrester Research argues that a blog has to be part of a larger social media strategy. Teach a PR person the fine art of community management 2.0. Give him a free pass for Twittering, Digging, Stumbling, and blogging all the day. Read Naked Conversations, for crying out loud.
Oh, and don’t forget to have a look at some fine examples. Quintura from Russia (read the story behind it here) and Digital Nomads by Dell (another story here).
Read more:
- SitePoint Blogs: 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging
- Online Marketing Blog: 5 Reasons Why Business Blogs Fail
- Dutchproblogger.com: 7 essential tips for corporate bloggers who want to write remarkable content (disclosure: that’s my personal blog)
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
By Rick Mans on Dec 15, 2008
This is also a nice follow up article written by Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester:
http://www.web-strategist.com/.....rate-blog/
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By Bruce Eric Anderson (aka bruceericatdell) on Dec 17, 2008
We all read the Forrester report and agreed that there is work to be done to engage with readers and not just push corporate messages. That was part of our plan around building out Digital Nomads. If you went to the site at launch (Aug. 12), you’d remember that there was a lot more Dell-centric content on there but over time we’ve been able to pull that off and make it more about those who are living digitally nomadic lives. We now have a Flickr group and invite nomads to upload their photos to appear in the banner of the site. Same for YouTube. I appreciate the kind words – we’re trying.
Bruce Eric Anderson
Digital Nomad
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By Agitationist on Dec 31, 2008
A different take on the Forrester Report from a media strategist’s perspective:
http://agitationist.com/corpor.....r-research
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