I had an interesting email last week from someone pointing me in the direction of a report showing that few ‘IT decision-makers’ placed much value in blogging as a company marketing tool.
The report notes that, without a sound business case, many Web 2.0 tools - podcasting, RSS, wikis, blogging etc - are being passed over by CIOs who don’t see the ROI materialising any time soon.
But, to me, perhaps the most revealing observation in the report comes from the firm which carried out the research, Forrester.
Their analyst G. Oliver Young notes: “Many business users still associate blogs with personal diaries, and some firms use blogs simply as a way to surface existing content, muting the effect.”
I think this indicates a telling disconnect between marketers, who are increasingly aware of the need to utilise these powerful new tools, and CIOs whose first thought is bottom line, bottom line, bottom line.
The CIOs are firefighters in this respect, the marketers are trying to build fire-proof buildings.
Moving forward, I’ll be blogging more on this, as, together with my colleagues, we hone some new media product offerings that we’ll be rolling out over time.
For now, this Wikipedia entry on corporate blogs details some of the potential benefits to companies in a really concise way.
And for those who doubt the potential of the humble blog to reinvigorate a flagging brand, here’s an interesting quote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who was asked what blogging had done for the so-called ‘Evil Empire’:
“I think it’s been a great way for us to communicate to our customers – and, more importantly, for our customers to communicate with us. We trust our people to represent our company. That’s what they are paid to do. If they didn’t want to be here, they wouldn’t be here. So in a sense you don’t run any more risk letting someone express themselves on a blog than you do letting them go out and see a customer on their own. It just touches more people. Hey, if people need to be trained, we can do that, but I find that blogging is just a great way to have customer communications.”
