According to JupiterResearch, 34% of large companies have a weblog, but that number is expected to grow by the end of the year. In terms of company budgets for weblogs, 23% report budgets between $10,000 and $50,000 and almost 6% of companies surveyed say they have allotted $5 million or more to create and run one or more corporate weblogs. The research also finds that weblogs are unutilized for generating word-of-mouth marketing opportunities with only 32% of marketing executives using corporate weblogs to generate buzz around their products or services.
But why are some companies slow to embrace blogging? Is it about the unfiltered comments that could have an impact on their corporate image? Well maybe, but employees and customer feedback could prove to be far more valuable than they think.
Five years ago, I tried to coax Interactive Corp to move to the blogging culture. Today it would have been the market leader had it listened. I’m still preaching the same old things. Build community and the readers and customers will come. While companies like Apple can continue to avoid blogging, others like Sun Microsystems — and smaller businesses — really can’t if they want to compete in a global market.
Originally posted on December 10, 2006 @ 1:02 pm