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8 October 2009

UK companies don't care about corporate blogging

Frank Harkin Content Strategist | Read all Frank's posts

Companies in the US may be experiencing a slow and steady growth in corporate blogging but, according to our research, only 4% of FTSE 100 companies publish a corporate blog – a figure that suggests that larger UK companies simply do not care about corporate blogging. At least not yet.

A directory of corporate blogging

The research comes from our new corporate blogging directory, which provides links and information on more than 150 (and growing) corporate blogs from around the world.

The directory is divided into Company blogs, which are about different aspects of a company's operations, and Insight blogs, which are written by individuals or organisations that focus on what companies are doing in areas such as social media and investor relations.

Corporate blog directory

Our directory is growing fast and is a great resource for anyone who wants to get an idea of what is going on in the corporate blogosphere. Find out which companies are blogging, what types of blogs they are publishing, where they are based, which industries they are from and what the experts are saying about them. It's all in the directory.

You can also add a blog that we've missed by filling in a simple form. New blogs appear all the time so we need your help to keep the directory up to date and to maintain it as a useful resource for anyone interested in corporate blogging.

Visit the blog directory

Blogging categories

While putting the blog directory together it became clear that not all company blogs are the same. Companies are made up of a variety of people and parts and the range of blogs that they publish reflects this diversity. Some blogs are about the company in general while others focus on specific issues or are written by specific individuals.

In our view there are five main types of company blogs:

  • Flagship blogs
  • CEO blogs
  • CR blogs
  • Careers blogs
  • Blog portals

Which brings us back to the FTSE 100

We found that only four of the UK's largest companies have a corporate blog. They are:

Is that it?

Not quite. Our research indicated that a total of 16 companies (see the appendix) had some kind of blogging platform. However, that was allowing for the broadest understanding of what constitutes a corporate blog.

When we added some reasonable criteria – public facing, written by a CEO or company employee(s), about company operations not sub brands or individual issues, regularly updated, comments enabled – only the four companies above met the standard.

Why are UK companies not blogging?

When compared to activity in the US the FTSE 100 is a blogging wasteland. According to recent research 32% of Fortune 100 companies have a corporate blog while, as we mentioned, there has been a steady increase in corporate blogging among Fortune 500 companies, according to the Society for New Communications Research.

So why are FTSE 100 companies reluctant to get involved? Do they simply not care what customers have to say? Are they worried about disclosure issues? Do they distrust social media?

What about UK consumers? Are they less interested in what a company is doing online or less keen to engage than their US counterparts? Is it a cultural thing?

Whatever the reason, FTSE 100 companies are unlikely to maintain their silence as their US counterparts open up. We expect to see more and more UK companies producing flagship blogs, CEO blogs, careers blogs and more, and we'll be using our blog directory to keep track of this progress as well as blogging about it here.

In the meantime feel free to let us know what you think about the future of corporate blogging in the UK and beyond.

 

Appendix

Read on for further research, FTSE 100 blogs that didn't make the grade and our methodology.

Further research

This is not the first time this kind of research has been undertaken. In February 2008, digital consultancy Real Fresh TV began a study of social media usage by FTSE 100 companies. The research seems to have come to an end in late 2008. By then, they had assessed just over a quarter of FTSE 100 companies and found that four had corporate blogs.

Going a little further back, Graham Hayday of Clarke Mulder Purdie performed a similar search in November 2007 and found that none of the FTSE 100 had a corporate blog (though his criteria were quite strict). A few months earlier, digital agency Openface conducted its own informal research and came to the same conclusion as Hayday.

In the US there has been quite a bit of recent activity in this area. In particular, a widely referenced (and above-mentioned) report from the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), which found that 16% of Fortune 500 companies had a corporate blog and identified a slow and steady rise in the adoption of corporate blogs among America's largest companies. It's well worth a read, if you haven't already.

The SNCR report was published in April and is one of a number of initiatives aimed at chronicling the use of blogging (and social media in general) among US corporations. These include the NewPRwiki list of CEO and corporate blogs, Socialtext's regularly updated Fortune 500 Business Blogging wiki, Debbie Weill's Big List of Big Brand Blogs and an exhaustive spreadsheet of Fortune 500 blogs by Philip Baker. Again, they are all worth a look if you have the time.

FTSE 100 blogs that missed out

Methodology

This research is far from exhaustive. Our method was to search for links on each company's home page, enter "blog" into the search field (where there was one) and search for blog and the company name on Google and Google Blog Search. It is entirely plausible that we missed a blog here or there (though how valuable it can be if it's that well hidden is another question). In any case, please let us know if we did. 

 

Posted by Urs E. Gattiker at 14 October 2009

Dear Frank

This is a very interesting an insightful post indeed. Thank you so much. Yes, several companies may have corporate blogs but only if we apply the criteria very generously:

http://howto.commetrics.com/methodology/indices/adding-a-blog/org-blog/ (criteria - what makes a corporate blog)

Thanks for sharing this

Urs
@ComMetrics

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Posted by Dave Brickell at 21 August 2010

Very interesting analysis - thanks! Have you done any updated work on this? I'd be interested to discuss it with you. Best, Dave

Reply from Frank at 7 September 2010

Hi Dave. Thanks for your comment and sorry for the delay replying. My colleague Paul has done some further research on social media in the FTSE 100. You can read his blog here: http://www.the-group.net/blog/index.asp?blogid=356. Hope that helps.

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