-
Website
http://www.attentionmax.com/ -
Original page
http://www.attentionmax.com/blog/2008/12/forrester_research_gets_it_wrong_by_saying_corporate_blogs_arent_trusted.php -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
One thing we need to keep in mind is that there is a generally low opinion of corporations in general, and the Forrester data reflects that. We talked about this with Josh in a private briefing with the Blog Council on Tuesday. By and large, people just don't trust large corporations as having their best interests at heart. So when they see that a corporation has started a blog, they see it as the Big Bad Wolf knocking on the door.
What's sad is that they don't see that there are *real people* writing these blogs. The work these people do is outstanding, and comes from a good place. They genuinely want to help make their customer's lives better.
For example, look at one of the example Josh wrote about in the report: Rubbermaid. (*) You have Jim Deitzel blogging about getting organized, preparing for the holidays, getting ready for New Year's, etc. It's fun and personal. He even posted pictures of his kids. Yes, he talks about Rubbermaid products, but in the context of getting organized and helping to solve real world customer problems.
How any of that could generate mistrust is beyond me.
cheers,
Michael
----
312-932-9000 / michael@blogcouncil.org / twitter: merubin
I am a Blog Council employee and this is my personal opinion.
* Rubbermaid is a Blog Council member. I write about them because I like them and they are good people.
But back to the "trust in corporate blogs" issue. The term "blog" may be the wrong term from the get go, and I daresay most consumers are having a hard time making a clear distinction between a "corporate blog" and the foundational website. Here I recall a similar study I ran for Nielsen (many times in fact...in fact it found its roots in a joint study I co-led with Jim Nail while he was at Forrester) that found that "Brand Websites" ranked right after "recommendations from other consumers" on the trust scale. Those results generally held consistent year after year, and across multiple geographies. Corporate blogs are basically subset of the brand website (albeit with greater syndication potential) albeit more informal, real-time, and "first person" in form and delivery (all improvements on the base model). It's hard to argue that they "downgrade" the brand website, unless they push the extremes of overselling (which clearly happens). All of this will get more complicated as "blog publishing" formats become more central to how basic online content is managed from the get go.
The bigger story, in my view, and this may well explain the low numbers, is that the word "blog" ranks below 18% in the Forrester study in BOTH the "personal" and "corporate" categories. For all we know, consumers are telegraphing distrust over blogs in general into the corporate space. If I were re-running the survey, I would add the "brand website" as well as "political blogs" (just to gauge whether political blogs have played a role in eroding trust).
More thoughts forthcoming. Good post.
- Pete Blackshaw
precisely the area I should have expanded on, so thanks for that build.
Expanding on your addition of "brand Web site" and "political blogs" to a
next iteration of this survey, I would like to see added corporate Twitter
accounts, Facebook profiles and product-sponsored communities. As a marketer
myself, the core question I want answered is: "To what extend does medium
and content type influence the trust of creator and source? (A twist on Pete
Kim's variables.) And the second question should be what other variables
should marketers consider in putting their most trusting foot forward (other
than the obvious -- acting honest, trustworty and authentic)?
I know from lots of hard data and antectdotal experience that our "corporate" blog is very well trusted by many people. We get lots of leads and sales as a result of it. And many more people tell us all the time that we put out great content that they trust.
Of course, many business blogs don't "engage" in conversations or tell the whole side of the story. Many don't stop promoting long enough to educate. So, it depends entirely on the company.
However, I like to tell people that a blog is just a piece of software that lets you update your website and get feedback. It's how you use it, that counts.
Maybe we have a long way to go to get marketers to start "talking at" their audience and start "conversing with" their industry.
Back in November I was in our NY office teaching individual sessions to several brands on corporate blogging and social media as a whole. The most important thing I drove home was building trust and genuine relationships with their audience. I probably scared everyone when I told them to allow negative comments further explaining that it presents them the opportunity to provide good customer service openly and publicly through a dialogue there.
I guess with this research I would want to know how long a person read a corporate blog before they came to the decision on trust. Right away? After a month or more? Was it just on brand name alone? Was it the person behind the blog? Was it due to a previous bad experience with the brand? I think there are a lot of factors and variables that can broken down...
Max, your point about trusting the phone versus trusting the conversation occurring on the phone is well taken. The Trust Barometer cited above (I think) supports this distinction: If I know the blogger, or if the blogger is someone like me....then trust is higher. In other words, it's not the blog...it's the person talking and the context of what's being said that matters. If the blogger is just a name...if the blog is obviously ghost written or fails to adequately disclose...then to Mike's point, corporate trust is low and so that impacts findings in ways that the questions probably didn't get at.
Should a company be blogging? ABSOLUTELY. As I say in "Social Media Marketing," to not participate is to implicitly sanction what is being said about you. By participating--and only by participating--one opens the door to trusted relationships. Even if trust is low--a contentious finding to be sure but assume it is--it's still a net gain to the extent that the trust factor is greater than zero.
In practical reality--and exactly to your point--to the extent that readers/participants build relationships with individual corporate blogger then over time trust almost surely goes up, significantly.
B) I love it when people question the prevailing wisdom. Forrester isn't always right. Nice work.
Great post, look forward to the follow up comments from Josh
Don't you find it shocking that only 16% of people react to the words "company blog" with any trust? I certainly did, I found it worthy of a headline.
Survey space isn't infinite, which is why the question is worded the way it is. We can follow up, and we will.
Since you agreed with our recommendations, where's the beef?
Many thanks for your reply to my reply. For the record, I have tremendous respect for you and your body of work -- have for many years, and you know that. But this was an exception. I explained my disagreements at great length in my post, and in the following comment thread -- and several smart people backed me up on the validity of my criticism. If I have erred, I invite you to specify where and debate where this thread went astray.
Your recommendations? They were awesome, and I called them out as such. In fact, I'll publicly endorse them right here by saying they're concise and reassuring. I sent them to my own management team, and to several industry colleagues.
But, as I underscored, they were foreshadowed by a headline pegged to what I believe was a survey question extrapolated too far. Yes, it is somewhat interesting that 16% of people react to the words "company blog" with little trust. But that's applying a broadcast mentality to a niche communications venue and channel. As a practitioner, I don't care so much how a general consumer population reacts to "company blogs in general" when prompted in an online, telephone or diary survey. (I have less and less faith in survey methodologies each day that goes on -- and that's coming from someone who knows a thing or two about them. But that's another issue.) The numbers were the numbers and I don't disagree that that's really how your consumer panel answered the question.
So what do I care about? The targeted stakeholders with whom we engage and build trust with over time. If I were in your shoes -- again, as I underscore above -- I would follow up on this work by trying to answer how one particular medium or channel and content type MIGHT influence the trust of a specific content creator and source. There is merit to the saying "the medium is the message." Yeah, but how much? And the second question should be what other variables are out there that marketers must consider in putting their most trusting foot forward (other than the obvious -- acting honest, trustworthy and authentic). This builds on Pete Kim's comment over key variables that must be considered but were not in this instance, as far as I can tell.
Look, I'm a marketing guy, employed to promote and protect the brands where I work. And I do take the whole social media movement seriously -- and I'm respectful of your work in advancing this new dimension of business. You've been among the clear thought leaders. But bottom line: I felt the 16% trust headline was more of a mischaracterization and distraction of deeper issues at stake. From a practical perspective, I believe it deserves less emphasis and more context. But damn, I'll give it to you: it was a great headline! I blogged about it, didn't I? You also motivated many others to as well, including mainstream press.
To conclude, I hope you'll keep me on your PR pitch list. You've prompted me to think critically about a few issues I otherwise would not have -- particularly those questions I extracted. And for that, I thank you. And since you are an analyst, I trust that you respect and enjoy healthy debate beyond your inner circle as well. We can agree to disagree.