Secret of Bloggers

The secret’s out: bloggers and companies don’t trust each other

A new survey reveals that bloggers trust each other more than information from corporate websites.

An online survey of 821 bloggers, which probed their views of corporate blogs and companies generally, has revealed that 63% find fellow bloggers a more trustworthy source of information than corporate websites (26%), corporate blogs (6%) or press releases (5%).

A huge 85% of bloggers view corporate blogs as only somewhat credible or occasionally trustworthy sources of information about a company or its products, with 8% finding them totally untrustworthy. Only 7% found them trustworthy. Thirty-five percent of bloggers would most like to interact with other company employees who blog, compared to company executives with whom only 19% said they most wanted to interact.

48% of bloggers have never been approached by a company or its PR representative.

The study, carried out jointly by PR firm Edelman and blog search engine Technorati, also focused on bloggers' attitudes towards being engaged by companies in the same way that PR engages mainstream media. It showed that companies and PR have been slow to establish proper contact within the blogosphere; 48% of bloggers have never been approached by a company or its PR representative. Only 21% of respondents report weekly contact from companies or their PR representatives and only 16% report that companies or their PR firms generally attempt to interact with them in a personalized manner.

Is the blogosphere unfairly sidelined?
The findings also revealed that bloggers feel the blogosphere as a whole has been sidelined by the corporate world. Forty percent said companies either don’t respond as often as they should, or not at all, to blog postings referring to them, and 42% complained that companies don’t realize the influential power of blogs. A further 28% said companies used blogs as a PR or marketing tool.

But perhaps companies’ mistrust of bloggers has been misplaced: 88% of bloggers say they correct themselves if they post incorrect information and 70% say they would evaluate product samples on their blog.