Corporate Weblogs - methodology redux

Greg Dowling | July 12, 2006, 03:21 PM

My recent corporate Weblogs report (or more appropriately the press release) raised the ire of several members of the blogosphere and has several bloggers crying foul. Well, in an effort to provide "transparency" to the survey methodology and answer some of the questions posed here and here, allow me to provide some additional data clarity.

The data point - "...nearly 70 percent of all site operators will have implemented corporate blogs by the end of 2006." was derived from survey data collected from 251 respondents across all industries. The survey was fielded to Web site decision makers from companies with more than $50 million in revenue. The survey respondents were selected from the E-Rewards, Inc. executive panel and sent an email with a link to an online survey. As an incentive, respondents were awarded with frequent flyer miles.

It should also be noted that "Weblogs" in the context of this report (and press release) does not differentiate between external Weblogs or internal "dark" Weblogs and is referring to the deployment of Weblog authoring technology not the creation of customer facing Weblogs. To reiterate, the survey respondents were Web site decision makers with budget authority asked about technology deployments, not marketers asked about their use of Weblogs. However, marketers were surveyed for the data point, "Only 32 percent of marketing executives said they use corporate Weblogs to generate WoM around their company's products or services."

I hope this dispels some of the controversy swirling around the blogosphere after this recent press release.