I've been following a great debate this week on Twitter and in the blogosphere about new Forrester data which suggest corporate blogs are one of the least trusted media channels. According to Forrester, only 16 percent of people trust corporate blogs, far fewer than trust traditional media sources like newspapers, radio, and TV.
Forrester's lead author, Josh Bernoff, blogged about the findings on Tuesday; his colleague Jeremiah Owyang posted on it several times Tuesday and yesterday; folks started hashing it out on Twitter; and a great discussion ensued. Check out the comments on Josh's and Jeremiah's postings for a flavor of the discussion; see also Max Kalehoff's strong critique (and subsequent comments).
The folks from Forrester made no suggestion that companies should forget about blogs as a result of their data. Instead, they provided a number of useful recommendations about how to make sure your corporate blog is well produced, interesting, not overly promotional, and, ultimately, trustworthy and useful to customers.
It's an important question for B2B marketers, and the discussion over the last few days has been both enlightening and a great example of the power of blogs and social media generally. A respected researcher puts out a provocative post, people jump all over it, it flies around the Net almost immediately, and everyone wins.
Personally, I don't believe the data are too significant. Even leaving aside research methodology questions that some commenters raised, It's not surprising that third party media channels would rank higher than those created by companies themselves. "Email from people you know" actually ranked highest, which again seems obvious. If corporate blogs ranked a bit lower than other corporate marketing channels, I guess that might be a little interesting, but I'd chalk it up to the still relative newness of the form and lots of bad press -- along with the reality that lots of corporate blogs are poorly written and overly promotional, and provide little reason for trust.
Meanwhile, I was struck again by the potential power of blogs and social media when I saw a MediaPost article this morning on the Forrester findings. The article provides a perfectly nice summary of Bernoff's original post, but the rest of the story with all the richness of the follow-on debate is missing! It's a great example of the struggle that traditional media continue to have in an increasingly social environment.
Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of MediaPost. I get several of their newsletters every day and almost always read at least few of their stories, which is more than I can say for most of the stuff in my in-box or reader. It's an important source for me on media and marketing issues, and they do a great job covering an incredibly diverse and fast-moving industry. And they want people to comment on their stories and get into debates, as most media organizations do at this point. But the dialogue and debate coming from social media seem far more substantial. By the time MediaPost covered the Forrester story, I had already read the equivalent of a dozen other articles, discovered a number of great new blogs, and added a batch more people to my Following list on Twitter.
For many marketers, it's a bit of a paradox. We need credible reach, which still comes from more traditional media. But the real connections and conversation are coming from social media. Integrating the two is obviously the way forward, but that's still easier said than done. Debates like the one Forrester sparked this week are a good step forward.
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