Who is reading blogs

I was asked by our CMO recently whether business decision makers are reading blogs, and quite frankly this is a really important question that deserves more than a yes or no answer.

My intuition tells me that the classic enterprise business decision maker, someone who we would qualify as having the authority to select and authorize a major IT project, is probably not doing a lot of blog reading. After all, at this executive level who has time in the schedule for such things, but then I saw this study that suggests a surprisingly high number of CEOs are reading blogs, using blogs for internal and external communications, and an increasing amount actually blogging themselves.

While interesting the above obscures two other realities about the state of enterprise IT. The first being that divisions and workgroups are increasingly making decisions about their own IT requirements and sidestepping traditional IT. The second reality is that CIOs and their ilk rarely make decisions in a vacuum, they are heavily influenced by their own staffs, extended advisory groups, and their professional peers.

My response to our CMO was that while I could not certify whether or not business decision makers were being influenced by blogs, I could say with a high degree of confidence that the people these decision makers rely on for influence are reading and reacting to blogs, therefore business decision makers are being influenced by blog if only by a degree of separation. Secondly, taking into account the increased fracturing of traditional IT within the enterprise, it would entirely reasonable to come to the conclusion that departmental buyers are mining blogs for information relevant to their departmental IT strategy.


Technorati Tags: blogs, enterprise

Comments

[viinnie mirchandani]

In my 3rd year at Gartner(I am slow) it hit me that buyers did not really read Gartner stuff - till they absolutely needed it, then they were like sponges. They wanted everything ever written or presented on the product or vendor or topic of interest.

Similar thing with blogs. Now, when they need the info they go to Google and type the key words and end up at your blog or mine more than the subscription required Gartner, Forrester or WSJ stuff.

From my tracking software I can tell many corporate users read my blog. What most do not like to do is to comment publicly. They will send me emails. Their PR policies still do not know how to react to blogs. Others do not want to identify themselves and end up on even more spam and cold calls!

finally, so many corporate users go from meeting to meeting. when do they have time to read blogs!

[Niall Cook]

You're right Jeff, this is an important question that deserves answering. I'd argue it's the wrong question though, and it doesn't actually matter whether business decision makers read blogs (I don't think "reading" a blog is a good qualifier, anyway - a lot of people wouldn't know whether they're looking at a blog or not - it's just a web page they clicked on when they searched "SAP" on Google).

I think CMOs should actually be asking themselves "is an opinion expressed about my company/brand/product/service online worth knowing about?" If not, then fine, walk away. If it is, then forget about who else is reading it. Just make sure you are!

[jeff]

Niall and Vinnie, your comments actually dovetail together very nicely.

[Paul J.]

Jeff,

Did you give Marty your response directly (which I presume) or did you tell him to come here and read it himself (which I hope)?

Paul

[jeff]

HAH! Gave it to him directly, sigh.