Web Business Marketing Blog

FACTIVA has 2 white papers (freely downloadable after registration) giving a good description of the blogosphere, and its potential for b2b marketing:

1. The first paper “Blogging and your Corporate Reputation: Part One - Listen to the Conversation” gives an overview of the blogosphere, how it can be used for market research and reputation analysis, its relation to traditional media (with forward-looking media now running their own blogs) and its use by journalists (blogs break news much quicker than press releases).
2. The second paper “Blogging and your Corporate Reputation: Part Two - Contribute to the Debate” describes organisation blogs, one of the promising and fast-growing sub-segments of the blogosphere.

In the first white paper, the issue of blog reliability is raised. Blogs do not yet have the tradition of fact-checking & balancing stories for which many traditional media have built up a reputation. But there is nothing inherent in blogging that precludes fact-checking for bloggers, and not all traditional media perform equally well in this area.

And specifically for b2b, there is another dimension that is equally important. Many b2b marketeers need to communicate a highly technical content, for example corporate banking, energy matters, process automation, … For these subjects, insight into a technology or industry is equally important for good communication, and this is where organisation bloggers who are experts in their fields have the advantage.