We increasingly read stories in the blogosphere that (ironically enough) predict the demise of corporate blogs in their current format. Why? The corporate blog was originally seen as a medium that was less marketing-driven than a corporate website, and one that would allow consumers to communicate with ‘real’ people, so they would get to hear the ‘real’ story behind the brand or the company. After the first successful experiments by pioneers in corporate blogging, such as General Motors in the consumer market, and Accenture in the professional services market, corporate blogs reached sufficient critical mass for the late majority to also set up corporate blogs. However, because marketers did not fully recognize the essence of the power of blogs in particular, and that of social media in general, a situation arose in which these channels were still being used too much as traditional ‘push’ channels.

In addition, other companies took a quite different – more dangerous – route, and started abusing social networks by promoting their company under the name of someone else. The effects of this have become apparent in the past few years. Every year, renowned communications agency Edelman (that also happens to be our downstairs neighbor in our Amsterdam headquarters building) publishes the Edelman Trust Barometer study. Their most recent study shows that respondents’ trust in their ‘friends and peers as a reliable source of information about a company’ went down from 45% in 2008 to 25% in 2010.

Forrester has noticed the same trend, but their results are even more shocking: only 16% of their respondents say that they trust corporate blogs. That is even lower than all other communication channels that were examined in the study, including print media, direct mail, and corporate emails. Read more…