Blog Adoption Rates

Clickz, the marketing site, reports on findings by Guidewire Group about the adoption rates among companies for blogs. The survey represented a cross-section of industries including aerospace, banking, communications, consumer package goods, educations, energy, and insurance. Within these industries. It reckons that the biggest adopters - 89% - were smaller companies. In brief, here are some of the findings:

"58% of corporate blogs represent companies with less than 100 employees,
companies with over 1,000 employees take up 16% of the blogosphere's corporate segment."

And in terms of revenue:

"companies with under $100 million in revenues account for 45 percent of corporate blogs."

Interestingly, the study also found that companies were using blogs as both internal and external forms of communication:

"91.4 percent use the channel for internal employee communications, and 96.6 percent for external dialog"

Of those who used blogs as an internal tool:

• 63% cited knowledge sharing as a key advantage.
• 44 % used it for Internal communications
• 30% used blogs for project management.
• 23% used blogs to share personal knowledge management
• 23 percent for event logging.
• 20 percent say it's an effective tool for team management.

And barriers to the creation of a blog:

• 42% of respondents cite maintaining enthusiasm for the blog project as a top barrier
• 36% find encouraging adoption a hindrance
• 30% of respondents admit technological problems are a concern
• 14% said establishing an editorial policy is an issue
• 18% said enlisting management support is a problem