BACKBONE CORPORATE BLOGGING SURVEY 2005

« CTA Blog | Main | Problems With The Zoomerang Survey Engine? »

June 7, 2005

Preliminary Corporate Blogging Survey Results

This is just a small sampling of our results. We want to encourage more corporate bloggers to take the Backbone Media corporate blogging survey, to that objective; we are releasing preliminary results from two survey questions. We’d like to ask you to consider the results and encourage more bloggers to take the survey.

Backbone Media defines a corporate blogger to be someone who works for a company and who runs a blog about their company’s products, services or industry. Backbone Media has contacted over 500 bloggers for the corporate blogging survey. If you fall into the corporate blogging category please consider filling out the survey. Even though a few companies have several hundred if not thousands of blogs listed, not every blog listed is actually all that active from our review of individual blogs. We think that due to the scarcity of actual corporate blogs we have not had as many responses as we envisaged. We have had over 650 people look at the survey, and 85 people have taken the corporate blogging survey, of those respondents, 64 have been bloggers and 19 have been non-bloggers.

Initial Survey Results

The survey results have been displayed in descending order according the average that is highest for each portion of each of the two questions listed. In this way we can determine what was the initial highest priority of bloggers and what factor produced the highest results.

Question: We want to understand the major priorities in starting a corporate blog. Before launching your corporate blog, what role did the following considerations play in your company's decision to start its corporate blog? Please rate each of the following categories according to the scale at the top of the question.

From the survey results it appears getting information or content out to an audience is very important, as is building a community. Surprisingly to me, 'thought leadership' though highly ranked was not the highest priority when a blogger was thinking of launching their blog. Our initial survey results listed 'thought leadership' as the highest priority, and that distinction has declined as more bloggers have taken the survey.

What was at the bottom of the list of priorities was particularly interesting, 'crisis communications' and 'customer registrations' and 'getting interview requests back from journalists'. Overall the results indicate that bloggers wanted to use their blog as a way to reach out and get information to their audience quickly.

	Not a factor	Some	Important	Very Important	Primary reason	Responses	Total Results	Average
11. Another way to publish content and ideas	0%	5%	11%	32%	52%	62	267	4.31
13. Build a community	3%	5%	21%	24%	47%	62	252	4.06
8. Thought leadership	5%	3%	19%	29%	44%	62	250	4.03
15. A way to get information quickly to customers	8%	5%	11%	39%	36%	61	238	3.9
9. A way to get feedback from my customers	8%	13%	21%	35%	23%	62	218	3.52
14. Increasing sales	13%	10%	21%	34%	23%	62	213	3.44
12. RSS Syndication	18%	16%	19%	27%	19%	62	195	3.15
3. Boost search engine positions	19%	13%	21%	32%	15%	62	192	3.1
4. Increase link popularity	16%	15%	25%	33%	11%	61	188	3.08
2. Gather feedback on a product or service	15%	24%	21%	31%	10%	62	184	2.97
1. Customer Service	26%	18%	23%	27%	6%	62	168	2.71
10. Respond to negative comments	35%	11%	31%	19%	3%	62	151	2.44
5. A way to get interview requests from journalists	34%	18%	34%	11%	3%	62	144	2.32
7. I was curious about blogging and wanted to try it	37%	21%	23%	15%	5%	62	142	2.29
16. Customer registrations	43%	23%	20%	5%	10%	61	132	2.16
6. Crisis communications	52%	20%	21%	5%	2%	61	112	1.84

Table Explanation

Not all of the 64 respondents answered every section of this question. We multiplied the number of answers by the value of the answer, i.e. the number 1 equals ‘not a factor’ and 5 equals ‘primary reason’. The total results were calculated and the table of priorities is ordered by the priority that received the highest number of total results in descending order. We also calculated the average for each priority so that we could account for the differences between the numbers of respondents for each section.

Responses: Indicates the number of survey takers who responded to a particular question.

Total Results: Equals the number of responses for a particular factor rating, multiplied by the rating number. I.e. for question eleven, "11. Another way to publish content and ideas", twenty people responded to the rating 'Very Important' and thirty-two people responded to 'Primary Reason'. We multiplied each number of respondents by either four or five, to produce eighty for ‘'Very Important' and one hundred and sixty for 'Primary Reason'. We then added all of the factors to produce the total result.

Average: The “Total Results’ number was divided by the number of respondents to each part of the question.

Question: Please rate your blogs impact on the following factors in your company.

As indicated by the blogger achieved results question, the results for blogs were not that far from initial blogger priorities. The results from respondents’ blogs do seem to have been better than initial expectations. One interesting difference in initial priority to actual results was ‘increasing sales’. That priority had been more important than boosting search engine rankings and gaining more links than initial expectations, but results indicate that as a factor ‘increasing sales’ achieved less results than 'boosting search engine rankings', 'increasing links', and 'getting product feedback from customers'.

Again PR results were at the bottom of the table in terms of results for both getting journalists to request interviews and crisis communications.

It was also insightful to see the results for RSS Syndication, that factor was rated highly as achieving success for respondents. In fact out of 59 respondents 46% thought their blog had achieved substantial positive results from RSS Syndication efforts.

	It's Hurting	No Apparent Change	Seems to Be Helping	Measured Success	Substantial Positive	Responses	Total Results	Average
10. Another way to publish content and ideas	0%	4%	19%	19%	58%	57	246	4.316
14. A way to get information quickly to customers	0%	9%	16%	39%	37%	57	230	4.035
12. Build a community	0%	11%	13%	41%	36%	56	225	4.018
7. Thought leadership	3%	3%	17%	40%	36%	58	233	4.017
11. RSS syndication	0%	14%	25%	15%	46%	59	232	3.932
4. Increase link popularity	0%	15%	27%	32%	25%	59	217	3.678
3. Boost search engine positions	0%	15%	31%	27%	27%	59	216	3.661
8. A way to get feedback from my customers	0%	10%	38%	36%	16%	58	207	3.569
2. Gather feedback on a product or service	2%	26%	23%	33%	16%	57	191	3.351
13. Increasing sales	3%	29%	31%	22%	14%	58	182	3.138
1. Customer service	2%	36%	32%	15%	15%	59	181	3.068
9. Respond to negative comments	5%	36%	31%	21%	7%	58	167	2.879
15. Customer registrations	5%	37%	33%	16%	9%	57	163	2.86
5. A way to get interview requests from journalists	5%	42%	25%	19%	8%	59	167	2.831
6. Crisis communications	7%	53%	19%	18%	4%	57	147	2.579

Table Explanation

Not all of the 64 respondents answered every section of this question. We multiplied the number of answers by the value of the answer, i.e. the number 1 equals ‘It’s hurting’ and 5 equals ‘Substantial Positive’. The total results were calculated and the table of factors is ordered by the factor that received the highest number of total results in descending order. We also calculated the average for each factor so that we could account for the differences between the numbers of respondents for each section, we did see a difference in results between the average and order of total results.

Responses: Indicates the number of survey takers who responded to a particular question.

Total Results: Equals the number of responses for a particular factor rating, multiplied by the rating number. I.e. for question ten, "10. Another way to publish content and ideas", eleven people responded to the rating 'Measured Success' and thirty-three people responded to 'Substantial Positive'. We multiplied each number of respondents by either four or five, to produce forty-four for ‘Measured Success’ and one hundred and sixty-five for 'Substantial Positive'. We then added all of the factors to produce the total result.

Average: The “Total Results’ number was divided by the number of respondents to each part of the question.

Posted by stephenbackbone at June 7, 2005 10:41 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://tmpmt.backbonemedia.com/mt2/mt-tb.cgi/21

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Preliminary Corporate Blogging Survey Results:

» Preliminary Corporate Blogging Survey Results from Hans on Experience
A while ago I did the Corporate Blogging Survey [Read More]

Tracked on June 8, 2005 11:07 AM

» Preliminary Corporate Blogging Survey Results from Hans on Experience
A while ago I did the Corporate Blogging Survey [Read More]

Tracked on June 8, 2005 11:08 AM

» Why do you have a corporate blog? from PR Opinions
John Cass has published some preliminary results from his corporate blogging survey and they make for interesting reading. [Read More]

Tracked on June 9, 2005 3:56 AM

» Le priorità di un corporate blog from TF
John Cass ha pubblicato alcune anticipazioni del suo sondaggio sul corporate blogging. Dai primi risultati emerge che tra gli obiettivi che spingono un’azienda a lanciare un corporate blog sono presenti l’esigenza di trovare un altro modo ... [Read More]

Tracked on June 9, 2005 5:55 AM

» Why do companies blog? from Fresh Glue
Backbone Media has published some preliminary results from their Corporate Blogging Survey and the responses paint a picture of why corporations start blogs. The top three reasons were: Another way to publish content and ideas Build a community Thought... [Read More]

Tracked on June 9, 2005 11:35 AM

» Backbone Blogging Survey: Preliminary Corporate Blogging Survey Results from Blogs For .Orgs
Backbone Blogging Survey: Preliminary Corporate Blogging Survey Results.Backbone Media is conducting an ongoing corporate blogging survey; they have released prliminary results:From the survey results it appears getting information or content out to an... [Read More]

Tracked on June 10, 2005 10:58 AM

» Geek News Central Podcast #73 2005-06-14 from Geek News Central
We have a great promotion for show 75, 2 listeners a man, and a woman will get free podcast hosting... [Read More]

Tracked on June 14, 2005 5:52 AM

» Geek News Central Podcast #73 2005-06-14 from Geek News Central
We have a great promotion for show 75, 2 listeners a man, and a woman will get free podcast hosting for 1 year including domain registration and setup of your website so it is Podcast ready. You have to send... [Read More]

Tracked on June 14, 2005 6:00 AM

» Backbone business blog survey from Adrian Trenholm
Backbone Media have set up a really interesting [survey on corporate blogging][1]. You can view the preliminary results on [Backbone's blogging survey blog][2]. The number of respondents who saw community and reputation building benefits is very high: ... [Read More]

Tracked on June 16, 2005 8:46 PM

Comments

Make it easier for us bloggers to promote your survey. Figure a way to do this, i.e., "email this survey to a colleague" (email a link to the survey, or the survey itself as text attachment).

Come up with a sidebar badge, a graphic icon: "I Took the Backbone Corporate Blog Survey" that is an image link to your site.

Many sites offer this kind of linking image, where the user merely highlights and copies the code needed to add to blog template, to appear in sidebar, for example.

I will actually create my own graphic sidebar badge (icon) with either HTML image link, or I'll just add a caption beneath it that is a text link to the survey here.

I'm going to work this up right now.

When you have a moment, check my Vaspers the Grate site to see it in my sidebar (right side).

Should be up in about 1/2 hour or so.

Cheers.

Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate

Posted by: steven streight aka vaspers the grate at June 8, 2005 7:04 PM

Thank you for this.

Posted by: scott baradell at June 14, 2005 12:00 PM