the business valueof blogging

LEWIS Global Public RelationsMarch 2007

The business value of blogging Table of Contents LEWIS PR, 20072

Table of Contents

Table of Contents.........................................................................................................................................2

Key findings & insights...............................................................................................................................3

Blogs: nice-to-have or need-to-have?......................................................................................................4

Introduction...................................................................................................................................................5

To blog or not to blog?...............................................................................................................................5

Blogs – what are they really?....................................................................................................................6

Types of corporate blogs...........................................................................................................................7

The Four-Step Guide to Blogging..............................................................................................................9

Step one: identify possible benefits..........................................................................................................9

Step two: determine requirements..........................................................................................................13

Step three: evaluate alternatives.............................................................................................................16

Step four: adjust for non-influenceable success factors........................................................................18

Corporate blogging worldwide................................................................................................................20

Survey background..................................................................................................................................20

Asia Pacific...............................................................................................................................................21

Australia................................................................................................................................................21

China.....................................................................................................................................................21

Singapore.............................................................................................................................................22

Europe.......................................................................................................................................................23

France...................................................................................................................................................23

Germany...............................................................................................................................................23

Italy........................................................................................................................................................24

The Netherlands...................................................................................................................................25

Spain.....................................................................................................................................................26

Sweden.................................................................................................................................................27

UK.........................................................................................................................................................28

USA...........................................................................................................................................................29

About LEWIS...............................................................................................................................................30

About the author...................................................................................................................................30

Methodology.........................................................................................................................................30

Disclaimer.............................................................................................................................................30

The business value of blogging Key findings & insights LEWIS PR, 20073

Key findings & insights

Corporate blogging worldwide

A qualitative questionnaire among 10international blogging experts and aquantitative survey of 300 companies from10 countries yielded the following results:

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Less than 5% of companiesworldwide currently have a corporateblog;

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Only the US is seeing some uptakeof corporate blogging across multipleindustries;

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In other countries, corporateblogging largely remains restricted tomarketing, communication and newmedia agencies;

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Key barriers for corporate blogging inAsia-Pacific include a great relianceon traditional media outlets, abusiness culture that values face-to-face communication and governmentmedia regulations highly;

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Key barriers for corporate blogging inEurope include uncertainty aboutbenefits and best practices, as wellas a traditional caution whenadopting new technologies;

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Remarkably enough, every countryexcept the US seems to think it’slagging behind the rest of the worldin regards to corporate blogging;

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Which means that in reality, nobodyis lagging behind: corporate bloggingis just not happening yet.The survey has focused on ‘true’ corporateblogs: blogs that are permanent, outward-facing and opinion-driven.

Deciding on a corporate blog

In the ‘Four-Step Guide to Blogging’, LEWIShelps companies decide whether or not tostart blogging. It offers a set of helpful toolsand insights, key among which are:

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Corporations who want to startblogging should either do it well, or not at all. Half-hearted attempts are awaste of money;

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Corporate blogging requires asignificant investment of time, skilland knowledge. Time and skill canbe sourced externally, knowledgecannot. Ergo, involvement from keycompany personnel is alwaysneeded – for at least 5 hours per week;

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Hiring a third party to write the blog isnot necessarily cheaper, as qualitycontent has a price tag;

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The primary power of a corporateblog is its ability to engage in one-to-many conversations, affecting amultitude of company stakeholdersat the same time;

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On individual business objectives,such as increasing morale or networking, blogs score worse thantraditional methods on a value-for-cost basis;

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Corporate blogs affect marketing,sales, CRM, HRM and PR.Therefore, it stands to reason thatthese departments work on, and payfor, the blog together.