I think the core issue is the brand of the term “corporate blog.” Nothing about it is friendly. Do any successful corporate blogs call themselves corporate blogs, or do they refer to their blog as either “our company blog” or by the branded name they gave it?

Regardless of the specifics you bring up, the data stands as it is. The real question to ask is “Why don’t people trust corporate blogs”. It’s pretty obvious, their often full of rhetoric.

So, let’s focus on fixing corporate blogs.

I wrote this handy dandy health check for those that have a corporate blog, it should help.

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/12/10/health-check-how-trusted-is-your-corporate-blog/

But, I was more making a statement about your announcement only 10% of people trust corporate blogs and leave it at that. Because of who you are and the organization you represent, there’s a lot of power behind that statement. People will act on it and throw it up on a PowerPoint slide. Most, like me, won’t initially read the report.

After you reveal your methodologies I still stand by my statement. It still was “leading” even though you didn’t go about it in the way I predicted.

The reason is we still don’t know people’s preconceptions to corporate blogs. For example, you’ll get a very different answer to the two questions, “Do you trust doctors?” and “Do you trust YOUR doctor?”

Similar to “Do you trust corporate blogs?” and “Do you trust your company’s blog?” and “Do you trust Company X’s blog?” All three questions I’m sure will yield very different answers.

You’re still not revealing the story of people’s misconceptions about corporate blogging. And from what you explained, research could look deeper for the real sentiments.

How do you know we asked leading questions? Commenting about our research without even having read the report is a bit odd.

Here’s more information from the blog posts by the analyst Bernoff. We’ve done a few reports on trust –this is just one.

http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/12/people-dont-tru.html

Here’s the methodology summary he put on the bottom of the blog:

A note about how we collect data. The data comes from an online survey we conducted in Q2 of this year. Our online panel is as representative as we can make if of the US online adult population (18 and older). Companies use our data all the time, and I believe it’s the best available survey of its kind; we’ve been conducting surveying consumers since 1997. In this case, we surveyed over 5000 people. We asked them to rate how much they trust information sources on a five-point scale, from 1 (don’t trust at all) to 5 (trust completely). Respondents could also answer that they didn’t use a particular information source. In this case about 80% of those we polled said they did use corporate blogs. Of those who used them, only 16% rated them 4 or 5 on the five-point trust scale.

i almost did not read it, since i don’t trust personal blogs — just corporate blogs :) (just kidding)

this is one of the things that irks me the most about “research” how the questions are “leading” to specific outcomes they want to prove, and they don’t share sufficient information for a reader to make an informed decision on the accuracy of the research.

even with a background as a research analyst (i was with Gartner for some time), i still think that there is lots to be done so analysts and researchers understand that they cause more damage than good by generating headline-grabbing research that has been developed to accommodate their hypothesis.

very well said.