Much has been written about blogs:
Are they a fad?
Is social media just a bunch of hype?
Does all this extra “noise” mean people will just tune out?
Worse, does all this shouting degrade the overall quality of discourse?
So, with all of this criticism and possible downside, when will the practice of blogging grow up? If ever.
A report by Jupiter research claims that the number of corporate blogs is set to double in 2006. Currently, 34 percent of corporation report that they have deployed blogs, with 34 percent planning to come online this year.
And much of my personal experience shows that companies are starting to be interested. I am getting more calls for consultations and “lunches.” However, I am still cautious. I want to be sure that companies and organizations think of what measurable business-related outcomes they hope to gain from a blogging campaign.
In other words, stay away from the blog KoolAid and engage in strategic decision-making. Over the next few weeks, I will be digging further into this topic and also opening the mic to hear what you think.
Update: I guess I was wise to say hold off on the blog KoolAid because Fard bought the study and analyzed it in his excellent post, Jupiter Survey Raises More Questions Than It Answers. The quest to get answers about the survey has been pretty bad, Toby at Diva Marketing Blog got the runaround too. Analyst firms are going to have to come up with a more transparent way to deal with bloggers. My point is still the same, tie blogs and any other foray into social media to business objectives and outcomes.
Thanks to Media Culpa for the link to the research
Photo by work2snap
