I don’t think that companies are really concerned about how blogging affects their bottom line. Companies incorporate blogs into their over-all public relations and marketing strategy to increase visibility and see it as a way to drive traffic to their main websites rather than replacing their corporate websites entirely.

There was a recent study (conducted by Cymfony and Porter Novelli http://www.btobonline.com/article.cms?articleId=28694) published in BtoB magazine in the US that stated that three-quarters of corporate blog owners (76%) said company Web traffic and “media attention” increased as a result of their blogs.

Since blogging is still a fairly new medium in the corporate world there is no tangible way of measuring ROI and, therefore, its impact on the bottom line. That said, however, there are many ways that blogging positively impacts a company’s over-all brand awareness—in itself a fuzzy PR concept. According to the above mentioned study by Porter Novelli and Cymfony, 42% said at least one specific post on their blog has affected the company or brand, and in most cases has had a positive effect.

Unlike many business initiatives that are based on thorough due-diligence with specific ROI goals, 63% reported starting the company’s blog because they felt a need to participate in the medium rather than to satisfy a specific objective. There is a saying that “when a new technology rolls over you, you’re either part of the steamroller or part of the road” and most companies don’t want to be perceived as part tarmac

The openness issue, I’ll agree somewhat as well, but companies should go with a static site that suits their needs. Our current worksite is a mix of contribute and wordpress. The €150 for the contribute licencse is a hell of a lot better than the €7k I was quoted from a couple of different companies for a CMS.

I have been looking at is how Internet presence adds to corporate asset (There is a blog lecture at netpr.blogspot.com). Being involved in social media increases the eFootprint of organisations they can react or can interact. Interaction increases eFootprint dramatically and thereby increase the corporate asset. Not just for the Google Juice it creates but for the effect it has on many other aspects of corporate activity.

The impact of the organisation having a social voice affects all its constituents. Internal audiences, investors, vendors and customers are all affected.

The benefits as Microsoft and General Motors have discovered are tremendous. In the case of Microsoft, social media has transformed its reputation and opened markets that were closing beforehand.

It is the bottom line but it is also the asset value of the organisation too.

i do have a major problem with your contention that a blog only costs €100-€600 pa. as you would have if i advised someone they could get all the pr/marketing abilities they needed from a book in waterstones and never have to pay a penny to a professional, and still have great pr/marketing.

i disagree with your figure both as a web-developer and and as guy who knows how many hours a week a blog can suck from you. the cost of those sucked hours *must* be added in if you are going to arrive at a meaningful ROI figure.

let’s cost your five hours. let’s make you cheap, at only €300 a day total cost to your company (i know you’re worth way more). five hours a week - round numbers, that’s about €15k pa. before adding in any technology costs. which *some* might get away with for your contentious €100-€500 a year, but most would not and would need to consider spending €2k-5k, or having an in-house geek.

the other side of your argument i have a problem with is the side that is actually missing. one of the fundamental issues with blogging - an issue identifed before there even was blogging, by the guys who wrote The Cluetrain Manifesto - is that it should not been seen as being a technological solution to a cultural problem. either the company is open, or the company is not open.

most companies, i think it is fair to say, are not open. they seek to control the flow of information, limit it, ration it, restrict it. they fear their competitors knowing too much, they fear their clients actually interacting with one and other. €600 is not going to change a company’s culture. a close-minded company with a blog is still a close-minded company, only now they’re polluting the ether with wasted waffle. if the culture itself behind the company does not change, no amount of technological smoke and mirrors will matter a jot.

blogging is part of a solution. but it is not the solution itself.

My feelings on it are this. Name you five favourite websites. One is probably a news site, theother is you email and the other three probably have to do with personal interests or online shopping. Why do you visit these sites? Because there’s always new content.

If you want to get people to visit your site then you have to update it, unless you’re offering a train timetable, etc. There’s no two ways about it in my mind. A recent survey which showed the majority of business websites in Dublin were getting few hits a day would back this up in my mind.

If you don’t want to commit to updatiung a website then fine. You should go with a bog basic brochure site, max you’re paying is 2 grand. But you shouldn’t be conned into paying some CMS soultion that costs 7 grand, which I know a lot of web dev do. Then you’re locked in with them and I personally think you don’t get a good ROI.

When you’re selling hammers, every problem looks like a nail, and I think a lot of web devs sell solutions which aren’t appropriate to the client, but very appropriate to the web dev’s bottom line.

I may spend five hours a week updating this site, but I’m not paying someone €145 an hour to do it. At the end of the day I have to decide how much time i should invest in it and whether that gives me a good ROI. I’ve cut back a lot since I started because of that.

In terms of real costs, I used to spend €100 a year, but I’m on Hosting 365’s free blog hosting plan, so I literally have to reg my domain every year now with them. If I ever started up my own PR consultancy, I could take this site, add in a couple more static pages and hey presto I’d be set.

begin at the begining. assume the company already has a website. add a blog - wordpress or whatever - and it has to be integrated into the existing site. frankly, there is nothing worse than companies that have a site and a blog with both using entirely different design templates. no doubt many non-geeks can do that, but not too many, in my opinion. i myself have spent too many hours in the past trying to integrate wordpress into sites - i don’t see it as being simple and straight-forward.

moving on, assuming the company is actually concerned about getting their message out there with regular updates to their website, they probably already have some form of even rudimentary content management system for all or part of the site. so it isn’t always true that a geek is required just to put words on the site. so what cost are you actually saving?

then, consider the true costs of blogging. how many hours a week do you spend on this site? between five and ten? charge that fairly, and i think you’re well beyond the €100 pa maintenance costs.

finally, consider what happens when the wrong people say the wrong thing on a site. i’m not advocating that companies should shut up for fear of saying something that will potentially have negative impact on them. but if you are comparing blogging to email, then you are highlighting one of the major problems with it. it can be too informal, too relaxed, too bloody dangerous. so you have to have the right people doing the job in the first place. and - most importantly - you have to have somethingt o say on a regular basis. not all companies can fit that criteria, which only increases the chance of waffle and piffle being posted to fill the “quota”.

i’m pro-blogging and do believe more companies should use it. but i see the costs differently to you.