Tuesday, January 20, 2009

What politicians and company blogs have in common

Forrester Research, in a report called Time To Rethink Your Corporate Blogging Ideas, has confirmed what some of us have long suspected, which is that company blogs are viewed with distrust by the overwhelming majority of people who read them.

Josh Bernoff's research found that out of 18 different possible sources of information (ranging from personal e-mails to newspapers and TV to wikis and online classifieds), corporate blogs rank at the very bottom of the trust scale (18th place), with only 16% of people who read them saying that they trust them.

By comparison, 15% of Americans say they trust politicians (ref).

I was able to download a free copy of the $279 Forrester report at http://www.forrester.com/imagesV2/uplmisc/Josh_blogging.pdf. Hopefully the link will still work when you go there.