What a statement in a recent Forrester Research report: "People don't trust company blogs.  What you should do about it”.  The post goes on to state that “Consumers trust company blogs less than any other channel” and that blogs come in below newspapers, portals, wikis and even direct mail in the trust department. 

Really? 

Let’s put the research in context.  To begin, these findings were collected in Q2 2008, and much has happened since then.  Influential corporate bloggers such as the BBC’s Robert Peston (“Peston’s Picks”) have surged in readership (and influence) since the economic meltdown.

Second, this societal distrust existed long before Forrester was founded and mirrors the larger citizen deficit and critical eye to media which we now encounter – consumers are critical and apply certain criteria to their increasingly conscious choices about how and where we spend our money, leisure and life choices from coffee to cars. This is the reality of anyone choosing to engage with consumers through various communications vehicles, from direct mail to radio.

Within the Forrester study results are some very positive findings on many of the targeted consumers for our clients.  Those who do trust blogs are 24% more likely to trust consumer product ratings/reviews (84% v. 60%).  Additionally, those who trust company blogs are 32% more likely to trust online content sites such as CNET and nytimes.com (71% v 39%); the same spread exists for print magazines.  A whopping 45% are more likely to trust personal blogs (63% v 18%) and 40% are more likely to trust SNS profiles from a company or brand (58% v 18%) than the US adult online population.

Thus, Forrester's headline creates its own haze of distrust of corporate blogging, and focuses on those who may be resistant and distrustful to more than just media.  If you keep reading, Forrester offers viable solutions to hurdle the “low-trust barrier”. They include:

• Get your employees in the act.  Their insight and impact beyond their desks can elevate trust and attract new follows and fans.  HP and Sun are great examples of having used employees other than corporate comms to drive blog content.  In my opinion, this keeps your content from becoming too narrow by diversifying your base of contributors (and potential readers).
  

• Blog to establish a voice outside that of your press releases.  As Bernhoff notes, blogging solely for the sake of PR does nothing to increase the level of consumer trust and is not easily measured for its bottom line contributions.  A great example of a company that has punched above its weight is New Seasons Market, a family-owned grocer recently subpoenaed by Whole Foods Market (the world’s largest organic grocer) for its email files in a federal lawsuit.  New Seasons Market is using Twitter and other tools to ensure that its voice is heard on a global scale.

So, be critical of snappy headlines such as those chosen by Forrester's Bernoff.  As New Seasons Market is proving to many, corporate blogging does work.  You can be nimble, agile and relevant to your consumers (and critics) in ways not possible last holiday season.    

Source: North American Technographics Media and Marketing Online Survey, Q2 2008

Deep within the Ofcom (the UK's communications regulatory body) website is a research report on, among other things, the impacts of increasing internet usage on national newspaper consumption.  Across seven countries, consumers are spending less time on 'offline' media since acquiring access to the internet.  

National newspaper consumption has eroded, according to Ofcom.  Of those surveyed in seven countries, 32% are reading national newspapers less now that they had access to the Internet.   France, meanwhile, had almost half (47%) of consumers reading national newspapers less.  Only one country, Italy (14%), had consumers reading national newspapers more now than prior to gaining internet access.  Given the downward spiral in national newspaper subscriptions, it can be assumed that the traditional national newspaper base will further erode, due to the growing traction of the Internet, the increasing fragmentation of the media market, the dissemination of free dailies such as the Metro on an international scale, and the consumer pressures on the wallets, regardless of country.

How does this Ofcom survey help to explain current UK media consumption trends at work, even those within our own research?  To begin, the 27% drop in national newspaper consumption from this Ofcom survey dovetails with our recent Media Trends report on the causal effect of online news growth on offline news here in the UK.  Metrica research found that 66% regularly read print newspapers and 26% read the online equivalent, mirroring the Ofcom findings of 65% and 27%, respectively.  However, Metrica research went a few steps further and determined that three quarters of Metrica respondents read the print and Web versions of newspapers, suggesting the influences of increasing choice, convergence and changing economic conditions for consumers and media. 

What does this mean for the erosion of British newspaper readership? If we take the Ofcom survey of 1,000 UK adults (who use the Internet), and apply that to the current UK Internet population estimate of 39 million users, a 27% drop in national newspaper readership audience would translate to more than 1 million Britons engaging less with newspapers, national, regional and local.  Thus, research from regulators such as Ofcom is limited, in that it does not examine the shared newspaper consumption findings from Metrica's research.  Moreover, Ofcom does not distinguish between national, regional and local newspapers, leaving any stakeholder with PR activities somewhat blinded from a comprehensive view of the current newspaper micro-trends. 

Ofcom reports are limited but do provide an international looking glass... a chance to reflect on our own in-country realities and opportunities as well as context, benchmarks, common themes and comparators in international media markets.   

What do you see within these international findings for your own countries and stakeholders?   What might explain the French rejection of national newspapers at a pace far exceeding other countries surveyed?  I welcome your thoughts.

Source: Ofcom (2008)

Interesting to note in the recent Technorati State of the Blogosphere/2008 report that European bloggers are, in general, younger and more predominantly male (73%) than US bloggers (57% male).  It appears that European bloggers' median annual profit (from advertising on their blogs) is 54% higher and their average monthly blog traffic is 33% higher than their US counterparts.  Score one for our side of the Atlantic.

For PRs, the study also unveils that 1/3 of those surveyed have already been approached to be brand advocates and that 82% of those surveyed post brand or product reviews.  Such findings suggest that, in this global snapshot of bloggers, blogs have become an increasingly important source of information by readers.  Conversely, for marketers, blogs appear to be gold dust as they are highly amenable to marketing opportunities. 

However, perhaps we need to harness the glee of universal optimism about brands and blogs for a moment.  As brands gain ground in the share of conversation by bloggers, questions of trust and trustworthiness arise.

As new media pioneer Dan Gillmor comments:

Traditional media are using these tools to do better journalism, and are beginning to engage their audiences in the journalism. Entrepreneurial journalists are finding profitable niches. Advertisers are starting to grasp the value of the conversations, and so on. The big issues remain, including the crucial one of trust. Here, too, we're seeing progress. The best blogs are as trustworthy as any traditional media, if not more. The worst, often offering fact-challenged commentary, are reprehensible and irresponsible. But audiences are learning, perhaps too slowly, that modern media require a more activist approach. We need to be skeptical of everything, but not equally skeptical of everything.

Gillmor's call for scepticism dovetails with Jeff Jarvis' vision for collaborative communities as the next generation of news and networked journalism.  I look forward to seeing where it leads and examples of networked trust developing as we redefine news and journalism.

The Society for New Communications has issued an executive summary of a forthcoming study, the "ROI of Press Releases."   The study results state the obvious -- the terrain and tactics of press release distribution have changed.  But some of the legacy requirements remain.

PR professionals stick with their traditional goals of announcing news and increasing thought leadership.  Marketers view SEO and reaching consumers as the most important tactics in this case.  Small business owners position online press releases as business development tools and potential profit centres. 

What struck me most about the survey results was the lack of a clear winner in criteria for measuring the success of online press releases… regardless of your profession. As seen by the clustering of the survey responses (multiple selections allowed), those who rely on PR remain unclear about the best metrics: 

• Online press release republished on websites (79.6%)
• # times online press release viewed online (76.8%)
• Articles generated from the online press release (75.4%)
• Media interview requests (74.2%)
• Traffic to organization’s website (~73%)

What do these results say to me?  First, more must be done to prove the value of an online PR function.  Second, traditional press release success criteria, such as distribution and exposure, remain the default metrics for PR success, whether online or offline.  What this study fails to engage with (and the study authors note this limitation) is that we need to move to more robust models of capturing larger indicators of success, such as product sales from online articles and related behavioural shifts that result from online and offline PR).    

Granted, it is early days in developing metrics for an emerging media relations tool.  However, PR metrics must not only measure reaching the media but reaching the public directly.  Perhaps charities, such as one mentioned in a recent Metrica blog post, hold the key to proposing commercial angle metrics structure to how best to measure the success of our evaluation criteria.

There's a new online publication on your virtual newsstand. Catch Magazine is being billed as the "Official Journal of Fly Fishing Photography and Film".  It is visually stunning, and will find traction with passionate anglers and photographers (with broadband).  Efforts to ‘hook’ readers can now be done through new tools such as PitchEngine, a social media web app currently in beta version gaining ground with PR practitioners.  

An invitation to preview Catch got me thinking.  What are the new do’s and don’ts of launching such high-definition online publications?  In your opinion, what 'old school' media metrics can be applied to such virtual publications?   Will such new social media web apps as PitchEngine provide positive bottom line results for the advertisers and creators?   In short, what are the best practices for Catch to outswim competitors and quickly gain a relevant broadband audience?

According to Hitwise, Britons are out-Twittering Americans. Interestingly, 70% more people in Britain use Twitter than in the USA.  The micro-blogging tool has experienced a 485% traffic growth rate in 2008 alone.   Some interesting nuggets from the study include:

• Broader age range appeal: Twitter has grabbed a broader age range than social networks such as Facebook and Bebo. 

• Key adopter segments: It has captured important early adopter segments such as the 25-34 (the majority of its users) and 37% of its users are in the 45+ age bracket.   (Many of these Twitter users would be the C-level executives in your own firms or target consumer groups).

• Gender parity: Twitter’s UK users are split 50/50 in gender, allowing it to avoid niche sector cul-de-sacs of gender imbalance online and offline, and giving marketeers more to work with in one source.

• London bias demystified: Only 15% of the Twitter UK micro-bloggers are from London, eroding some of the myths that early adopter tribes are prevalent in global commerce cities such as London or colonise creative class and entrepreneurial hotspots.

I find this fascinating stuff.

What reasons do you think might partially explain the British propensity to Twitter?  Having just returned from the USA, I can vouch that Americans are less apt to text than Britons (possibly for economic reasons).  Could it also be echoes of cultural stereotypes about how different (but similar) cultures approach communications tools?  Maybe something else.

What are your thoughts on why the British are out-Twittering Americans?  More important, how can these learnings be applied to your communities, core programs and clients?