Business Blogging: Who Can You Trust?
May 6, 2008 by Liz Fuller
Filed under Social Media
Who would you trust more to tell you the truth? The CEO of a major corporation or one of its employees? Corporate advertising or a blog? A story on TV or a story from a friend?
If you are like the respondents to the latest Trust Barometer survey conducted by Edelman PR firm, it would be the employee rather than the CEO, a blog rather than advertising, and a story from a friend rather than one on TV news.
This means that a lot of the effort most companies put into their communication and strategies is focused in the wrong places. In fact, 55% of the US respondents aged 25-34 cited Wikipedia as the most credible source of information about an corporation – I wonder how many corporate PR groups know what wikipedia is, let alone what is written there about their company.
The solution? According to the report:
Share your content with your employees, passionate consumers, and bloggers, allowing them to co-create, repurpose, and improve their knowledge through dialogue. Change your tone from one that pronounces to one that invites participation, ceding some control in return for credibility.
Click here to read the full report. I’d love to hear your opinion on whether you think corporations are going to be willing to give up some control in order to gain credibility?
photo credit: Joe Nangle
Wow, that’s pretty pathetic that so many people think Wikipedia is the last word in accuracy! I hope they’re not basing important decisions on what they find there without verifying it against other sources!
Robert – I agree – I think it’s pretty scary. I know wikipedia has put in some restrictions on who can update data – but I wonder if people realize that the editing is really open sourced to the public?
Reminds me of that line from Lily Tomlin – “Reality is just a collective hunch” !!