CorpBlawg's Review Of The Blogging Success Study

Cornelius Puschmann on the CorpBlawg recently read the Northeastern University and Backbone Media blogging success study, and wrote the post, "Why you’re interesting but your company just isn’t". He asked, "if blogging is a strategy for replacing the big company image with another - friendlier - image, isn’t that different from showing people what things are “really like”?".

He is right if blogging is only an attempt to show a friendlier image, I think most of the corporate bloggers would say a company would not be successful.

In the section on transparency I wrote, "In part, the success of the Scobleizer was because Robert Scoble regularly criticized his own employer, yet still retained his job at Microsoft,"

If a company dares to be transparent, and even conduct self constructive-criticism in public, there are definite benefits to be gained. The success in blogging with Microsoft comes in part from being to talk about issues and problems warts and all.

And on Cornelius's last point, "Wonderful, but isn’t it problematic that readers tend to find those topics most interesting which are least connected to the company? Doesn’t that imply that blogs have a tendency to be personal and that the relationship between the reader and the blogger has little effect on the relationship between customers and the company? I’m not sure, but I’d be careful to dismiss these questions."

Thank you, a great question and one that should be considered carefully certainly not dismissed. We don't know if the relationship between the reader and the blogger has little effect on the relationship between customers and the company. To answer that question we'd have to ask the customer, or find some way to measure blog readers’ actions and compare the reader's perception of the relationship they have with the blogger.

(Note here: I wonder if such studies have been conducted with regards to television and radio in the past?).

I don't think we have enough data, but I would point the reader to this post on my recent research for my book on blogs, in the chapter I am writing about blog reader opinions of blogger credibility. The interview with James Thomas a reader of the Masi Guy blog seems to indicate that the personal connection with Tim Jackson of the Masi Guy blog has inclined him to consider Masi more carefully as a brand.

Cornelius thanks very much for your analysis and discussion. Just the sort of useful discussion we were looking when we set out to conduct this research.