Hot News: Blogging Tanks Among Inc. 500

By Angie Jeffrey, APR

Now here is a fascinating turn of events!  Would you believe that the number of the Inc. 500 companies maintaining corporate blogs has dropped from 50 percent in 2010 to 37 percent in 2011?  Reported by David Strom in ReadWriteWeb, this finding came from a five-year longitudinal study done by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth under the direction of Nora Barnes. The study also found, not surprisingly, that companies in the Advertising/Marketing industry are more likely to blog than those in Government Services and Construction.

In comparison, while the use of blogging remained pretty stable among the Fortune 500 from 2010-2011, that group always has had a much lower level of blog use than the Inc. 500 (which is the fastest-growing set of private American companies tracked by Inc. magazine). Barnes stated that, “The use of blogging may have peaked as a primary social media tool in the US business world.”

Additional research showed that three-fourths of the Inc. 500 companies are using social media tools such as LinkedIn and Facebook, and 90 percent of the respondents see them as important for improving brand awareness and company reputation, generating web traffic, generating leads, and supporting customers.

Chart is from The 2011 Inc. 500 Social Media Update: Blogging Declines As Newer Tools Rule, Page 5

I’m not in the least surprised.  For years, I have wondered how long companies would embrace corporate blogging, since it involves such heavy staff time commitments.  For a firm like CARMA, in a vertical industry niche, blogging is still worth the investment, especially since we’re doing it as a team.  But is it worth it for your company?  Take a look at the study and tell us what you think!