The survey also found that:

-- Less that quarter of the respondents report reading business-related blogs once a week or more.

-- Less than fifteen percent say that someone in their organization is currently writing a blog related to the company; and only eight percent report organizing a team to write blogs about the company and its activities.

-- Three percent said their company changed its product, service, or policies because of publicity generated by a blog written about it.

But apparently blogging is now appearing on the corporate radar as a potential threat:

-- Twelve percent of senior executives say their companies have taken legal or other action in response to a blog.

-- Twenty percent report having a formal process in place for monitoring blogs written about the company.

-- And not only did the majority acknowledge that their companies should have such policies concerning their corporate blogs, forty percent believe that their companies should have corporate policies to address the writing of blogs by employees unrelated to the company or its activities.

EDITORIAL

Actually, the above is based on a purified revision of a PR release Wednesday, "Fortune 1000 Senior Executives Slow to React to the Growing Credibility of Corporate Blogs." The Benjamin Disraeli quote comes to mind, "There three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." It never ceases to astound me what PR does with numbers. The essential fact is that as of April 18, 2006, only 29 (5.8 percent) of the Fortune 500 reported active public blogs written by their employees about the company or its products.

AND FOR GOOD REASON! The hierarchical and command-and-control natures of business are essentially incompatible with blogging. Period. They are slow to react to it as a credible corporate communications medium because THEY DON'T THINK IT IS A CREDIBLE MEDIUM. IT'S A THREAT!

To position it as "Senior Executives Slow to React to the Growing Credibility of Corporate Blogs" is elitist hooey. To even suggest that you want to compare the business smarts of senior-level corporate execs with the likes of the rag-tag PR Blogger "A List," is just plain silly.

This is a fucked-up case of a surreptitious proposal begging for facts to support it. Typical in PR, it is seldom if ever a matter of facts that coalesce to form a story. It is a story motivated by a hidden agenda that looks to find or create facts to rationalize it to a target customer audience.

Here, mixed in with the release, listen to the words of the PR firm that sponsored the study, Makovsky & Company. EVP, Robbin Goodman said:

"This [study] reflects that the credibility of corporate blogs, whether sanctioned by the company or written by others, is growing, but that executives at top companies are slow to come to grips with recognizing their importance in building a dialogue with customers and other stakeholders - including critics."

"[There] is a lag that needs to be rectified. Whether they are used to demonstrate expertise, share knowledge, improve customer satisfaction levels, support a product brand or burnish a company's reputation, blogs should be an essential element of every corporation's communications strategy."

"A proactive approach to blogging is in the best interest of the corporation, as our survey respondents clearly acknowledge."

"Smart companies take the initiative to develop the policies necessary to preempt potential problems, without stifling blogs that create valuable dialogue for the organization."

But Robbin does have a clue apparently:

"The same characteristics that make the Web an ideal medium for positive communications - namely immediacy, speed, ease of use, and the pass-along effect - are also ideally suited to the spread of negative publicity."

"Most of the companies are probably relying on preexisting corporate policies on related issues, such as confidentiality, protecting corporate reputation and Internet use at work.

Right.

See... PR firms have a single motivation when recommending various communications tactics or tools, i.e. MONEY. Blogging represents a whole new potential vein to mine. If they get out in front of it, as it is communications related, they can be the rightful heirs. It promises a windfall! Some are not so coincidentally calling blogging PR's "killer app."

But, what they fail to realize is the Net, blogging or otherwise, is essentially a dis-intermediation machine. The very thing these self-proclaimed "pioneers" want to lay claim to it, will likely send them packing.

One final comment with regard to Makovsky's release. Not two months ago, the president of Makovsky & Company, Ken Makovsky, wrote and article titled, "Truthiness." The word, chosen by the American Dialect Society as the 2005 "word of the year," refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wants to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true. Makovsky said, "People are playing fast and loose with the facts in an attempt to sound credible but, in reality, the most credible position is always the truth. Tell the truth! Take the facts and present them to the advantage of the organization you represent. But don't play with the facts and craft something that's not the truth... just something you wish were true."

I believed him.