Unbelievable blogging stats unveiled

According to the results of a study released at the BlogOn conference in New York, 55% of corporations are blogging internally, externally, or both. Guidewire Group’s BlogOn 2005 Social Media Adoption Survey suggests 91.4% of these corporations are using blogs internally and 96.6% externally.

If you believe these results, I have the deed to a nice bridge we should talk about.

There’s no word on how the study was conducted or what the sample was, but it appears that the survey instrument itself was available on a Survey Monkey website. If that’s the case, it’s likely that only people from companies with blogs bothered to answer, skewing the results more than American Idol fans with their call-in votes. Anybody working in the world of corporations knows that the vast majority of companies are holding back (or, in some cases, resisting blogs altogether). At far more than 10%, the people who would make the decision to launch a blog don’t even know what they are.

It would be nice to see a legitimate, scientific study of, say, the Fortune 1000. I remember such studies dealing with intranet adoption about a decade ago. In the meantime, we’re stuck with this nonsense. Nevertheless, there are some interesting numbers deeper in the study. For example, among those companies responding that actually do have intranet blogs, the predominant use is knowledge sharing (63%) and internal communications (44%). About 60% of those with external blogs have more than one and 17% have more than five.

Interestingly, the biggest problem business bloggers face is maintaining enthusiasm.

1. From what I was able to look up, the only real means I saw of the survey being advertised, was on a post of the BlogOn blog.
   As everyone I’ve seen commenting on the survey is saying, take the uptake numbers with a pinch of salt as they are by no means representitive.

   What the results are using for is seeing the problems that are getting in the way of blogging. Enthusiasm being a greater issue than management support is a real shocker to me.

   Posted by Dan Hill  on  10/19  at  04:26 AM

2. Hi Shel - I’m a master’s student working on my thesis on the topic of internal corporate blogging.  Naturally, your post was interesting to me as I am conducting the same type of research. My survey, which will be closed on Friday, Oct. 28, 2005, can be viewed here (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=318901409057).

   However, I share the same concerns regarding the BlogOn survey results.  While details on how the survey was conducted can be found here (http://www.blogonevent.com/blogon2005/blog/) and here (http://www.blogonevent.com/archives/Guidewire Survey Executive Summary - Blogging in the Enterprise - Oct 2005.pdf), there is no clear indication of who exactly the respondents were.  For example, the research firm may have had 140 respondents, but did they represent 140 different companies, or were a handful from a single company.  This would certainly skew the results.

   I thought I would share this information so you and others would be able to see exactly how the study was conducted; and it helps to confirm that while some of the information obtained is valuable, we still have yet to see solid evidence of how many companies have truly embraced this technology.

   Thanks for sharing this information.

   Lindsay, Westchester County, NY

   Posted by Lindsay  on  10/20  at  02:52 AM

3. Hi Shel - Just wanted to update the information in my previous comment.  To allow for enough time to analyze my survey results and incorporate them into my thesis paper, the survey will actually be closed on Sunday, Oct. 23.  So those who would like to contribute their perspectives and experiences can still do so until Sunday at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=318901409057

   Thanks again.

   Lindsay

   Posted by Lindsay  on  10/21  at  11:01 AM