People don´t trust company blogs

According to Forrester research only 16% of respondents trust in information found on company sites. 77% believe in personal recommendation, even 28% believe in email and 25% dmail from a company or a brand. Does it mean that companies should give up blogging and get back to traditional communication vehicles?
I don´t think so.

First: a company shold be specific in expectation, topics to communicate and needs on the market and accordingly select the mean. I think for long term awareness blogs are very effective.

Second: get credibility. Depends if you want to build renome for the professionals in the company, or change/build awareness for your product or brand.

Example? In Spring 2008 we in Microsoft Slovakia also considered how to get closer to public with informal communications which may send traditional press releases to the past. There were 2 possibilities:

• create company blog on our platform feeded by our internal profesionals, or
• create external plaftorm to blog for selected external bloggers, specialists in the field.

Despite the fact that we employe skilled professionals and that it was more challenging from development and time perspective to choose the second option was right decision. Not only looking at the results on Forrester above, but based on figures and feedback.

Based on my experience I believe that company specialist after a year loose the consumer/business partner insight which makes engagement of external contributors particulary important. About this in one of my following posts.