Forrester says you don’t trust corp blogs

Originally posted on the Etelos blog, but I’ve added some extra commentary here.

Do your customers and prospects trust your blogs? New research from Forrester says they don’t.

Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff recently released a report that had this interesting tidbit, amongst others:

Consumers trust company blogs less than any other channel.

This result comes from a survey wedid in Q2 of 2008. Have a look at the data yourself. Not only do blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company
email, and message board posts. Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them. If you’re a corporate blogger or somebody who advises companies, you need to take this into account.

I’d like to know if you trust what we say here on these pages. we strive to create an open discussion on cloud computing, enterprise software and Web app distribution, amongst other topics.

Last year, Etelos was named as one of Inside CRM’s top 20 corporate blogs because we have made an effort to make sure every post is not a promotional spin piece for Etelos.

More to the story

There’s more to this story, though. In the original post, Bernoff lists other sources that people trust more than corporate blogs.

“Email from people you know” at the top is no surprise, but to see items such as wikis and yellow pages ranked higher is interesting. Most yellow pages services are sponsored listings — ads.

Quite frankly, I’m more willing to put faith in a quality, open and honest blog post than in an ad.

What I see in the general trend of trusted sources is that newer sources of energy are decidedly at the bottom of the list, while established or older relationships trend toward the top.

Earning trust

In his summary blog post, Bernoff advises that an open discourse is essential to establishing trust. Basically, what that means is that trust is earned. For a smaller company in a specialized industry such as we are, this trust is earned first in a small circle of companies.

So, how can companies earn trust? Here’s a couple of ways:

• Don’t just blog about the positives. Perfect software doesn’t exist, especially if yours is wearing a Beta tag.
• Link out, link early and link often. I feel that referring to others enhances your credibility.
• Let your content speak to your expertise. If you are truly innovative, your content will say so.
• Convers with your readers. Invite comments, respond to comments and post comments on others blogs.

So, my challenge to you is to earn some trust. Let me know what steps you’re doing to earn that trust.