A survey done by Guidewire Group for the “Blog on” conference in the US shows corporations embracing blogging as a way of reaching their target markets.

Here is the meat:

Companies use external blogs for public relations and marketing (61 percent) and “demonstration of thought leadership (61 percent). More than 40 percent of respondents had a blogging CEO. The expected benefits of external blogs include improved brand recognition and external communications, as well as a vehicle for customer feedback. While 20 percent of respondents expected blogs to generate income, 58 percent expected them to improve rankings in search engine results.

Blogging companies said the biggest challenges were maintaining enthusiasm (42 percent), encouraging adoption (36 percent) and dealing with technological problems (30 percent). Few seemed to grapple with cultural issues such as setting editorial policy (14 percent) or dealing with inappropriate comments or content (14 percent).

Kudos to Mike Sigal of Guidewire for a well-constructed questionnaire.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 6:30 am and is filed under Corporate communications, Reputation management, Business blogging, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.