How have corporate blogs evolved? Not very much is probably a fair assessment.

According to the Fortune 500 business blogging wiki, as at the end of 2009, 79 or 16% of Fortune 500 companies have a presence in the blogosphere. That is up from 27 companies, or 5%, in 2006. That’s an almost 200% jump. Admittedly, that’s a very impressive increase. But when you think about it, that means 421 of some of the largest companies in the world, or 84%, have yet to jump onboard.

In another survey done by Forrester Research in 2008 (the latest research available on the topic), the number of business-to-business (B2B) companies that took up blogging actually dropped from 36 in 2006 to 19 in 2007.

To be fair, a search on Google reveals a substantial number of blogs about how to run or promote B2B companies. But blogs by B2B companies are few and far between. Aside from technology and internet companies, with a few exceptions of businesses in other industries such as Nike and McDonald’s, it seems a lot of corporations remain wary about blogging.

Why aren’t more companies blogging?

This question was posed by SCOUT, a blog marketing service, in early 2007. Three years on, the question remains relevant.

There is no doubt corporations are sitting up and taking notice of the important role social media, including blogs, play in today’s business environment. So, it begs the question, why are companies still slow on the uptake in setting up a blog presence?

Return of investment

According to Forrester, this could be due to the perception that there is no return of investment (ROI) in corporate blogging.

Well, Bill Marriott begs to differ. The Chairman and CEO of Marriott International says the hotel chain made more than US$5 million in 2008 in bookings from reservations made by visitors to Marriott’s blog, Marriott on the Move.

Granted, Marriott’s example may be an exception. But there’s no doubt that having a blog elevates a company’s presence online exponentially, in turn giving the company’s search engine optimisation a tremendous boost.

It’s not about you

Besides a few savvy corporate blogs, most companies are still making the mistake of adopting the ‘me’ approach i.e. their postings are all about the company or their products. Well, it’s not. It’s about the targeted readers i.e. existing and potential clients.

A blog is a valuable tool in achieving more sales, but direct promotion should not be the priority. American Express does this best. Rather than hard-selling its products, its blog, Open Forum, provides information that helps its target market of small business owners.

Trust issues

Also at issue is the question of ethics. Some in the blogging community feels that corporate blogs are commercially motivated, hence are unethical. Is it any wonder then, in another survey done by Forrester in 2008, it found that consumers rank corporate blogs at the bottom of the trust scale.

Again, it goes back to our point about how blogs should always be about the clients, and sharing information.

Engagement

The keyword is engagement and starting a conversation. A good example is Nokia’s blog network named Nokia Conversations, with the friendly sounding tagline, ‘Stories from around the neighbourhood’.

Besides blogging about Nokia’s products, there are posts asking consumers what kind of phone they’d like the company to manufacture, to advice on the important features in web browsing devices.

Doing great

To be sure, there are some corporate blogs that have grown, and continue to thrive, over the years. Some companies that come to mind are Accenture Blogs, Google, the Dell Blog Network, Microsoft Community Blogs, and SAP Blogs.

Leap of faith

Despite the far from convincing statistics, we remain optimistic about the future of corporate blogging. It’s just a matter of time before more companies take the leap of faith into the blogosphere.

For more information, please contact Manifesto