Blogs Twice as Trusted as Congress

Josh Bernoff, a Forrester analyst and co-author of Groundswell, has issued a new report and has written a new blog post, entitled “People don’t trust company blogs. What you should do about it.” As people ranked sources of information, “company blog” came in dead last, at 16 percent.

I don’t trust it.

Don’t get me wrong. I have immense respect for Josh, and I think his post does point out some useful takeaways about how a corporate blog can be successful.

But I think the question that was the basis of his research was essentially meaningless.

It’s like asking people for their approval or disapproval of Congress. Before the last election in the U.S., the approval rating for Congress was at an all-time low, I believe. Something like 9 percent.

But people don’t vote in their local elections based on their opinion of Congress as a whole; they vote based on their local member of Congress and their perception of his or her record.

As Matthew Grant said in the comments on Jeremiah Owyang’s post about this study said, what’s really interesting is that the trust rating for personal blogs was only two points higher.

“Blogs” in general have negative connotations, just like “Congress” as a whole does. But a blog is just a type of Web site; one that enables interaction. I ‘m sure lots of people go to blogs and don’t even realize they are on a blog. They just perceive it as another Web site.

People are distrustful of companies in general and politicians in general. And they’ve had good reason, as demonstrated yesterday by the Illinois governor’s arrest for trying to sell Obama’s seat in the Senate. Rod Blagojevich’s trust level is probably around 3 percent today. Even after the recent vice presidential campaign, I’m betting Sarah Palin’s approval rating in Alaska is at least 20 times that.

People make distinctions among blogs (company or personal), just as they do among members of Congress. Or governors. The Blog Council (of which Mayo Clinic is a member) has a post discussing the Forrester findings as well.

As Shel Holtz put it nearly two years ago:

I trust certain people, and some of them have blogs. Therefore, I trust their blogs. It’s the person I trust, in other words, not the medium.

So as Josh says, be different. Be one of “the good guys.” If you’re going to have a company blog, don’t make it a regurgitation of the company line. Provide useful information and an opportunity for interaction. Let people make their voices heard on your site. And listen.

Trust me!

You can pass this along to people who trust you with the handy buttons below:

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Signs of Mainstream Media Demise

I know that MSNBC has 168 hours of program time to fill each week, and with its blogs the New York Times editorial board no longer needs to limit itself to commenting on all the news that’s worth printing (because blogs are essentially free), but their hyperventilation yesterday over Sarah Palin more than two weeks after the election is amusing and instructive.

It seems the carnage of a couple of turkeys being slaughtered in the background (after she had issued the traditional gubernatorial pardon of one of their next of kin) was just too much for these scribes’ sensitive souls. MSNBC thought the video needed to be sanitized (for the kids, at least):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8DTSPzU0RI]

Here’s the unedited version, linking directly to the point where MSNBC averted its (and our) eyes. Pretty gruesome, huh? I’m sure MSNBC has never had anything quite so awful on its programs.

I hope they enjoy their berries and nuts for Thanksgiving.

Tim Blair has a good overview of the reactions (the LA Times’ Elizabeth Snead, with her condescension toward Gov. Palin “making little to no sense (as usual),” while Snead herself uses the profound phrase “slaughtered alive” in the next paragraph, is another highlight) and John Hinderaker at Powerline has more good analysis.

A decade ago my now-teenage daughters got first-hand experience with the origin of the phrase, “running around like chickens with their heads cut off” as we helped some farmer friends round up their poultry for slaughter. I guess my girls were more emotionally well-adjusted at 7 and 8 than MSNBC’s David Shuster is today.

It is instructive to see the inordinate attention to the turkeys’ holiday holocaust, especially in light of some “meatier” recent news about mainstream media, such as

Journalists often lament that the economic woes facing mainstream media have dire implications for our democratic republic, because no one will have resources for serious investigative reporting.

It seems the attention to the Palin poultry proceeding may be a sign that the mainstream media descent into triviality is already well advanced.

Meanwhile, I can’t help but embed this classic clip because of its association of turkeys and mainstream media:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iafzqOCaxA4]

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Social Media 301: GOP and McCain Use of Web

No campaign has used the Web as effectively as Barack Obama’s has, as his record-setting fundraising totals testify. He’s the second-most popular person on Facebook, after Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. I have invited any SMUGgle with first-hand experience of the Obama on-line campaign (and who got the early-morning text message last Saturday about the Biden selection as the VP candidate) to become an Associate Professor and write a post analyzing its strengths (and whatever weaknesses they may see.) A couple of people have expressed interest, although neither has yet submitted a post. Hopefully we’ll have something fairly soon.

Meanwhile, because my political leanings are conservative and because I worked in campaigns and government on the Republican side for 14 years prior to a career change, I’m doing this post examining the McCain campaign and its use of the Web.

As of this writing, Sen. McCain trails Sen. Obama by 1,236,581 “supporters” on Facebook, although I think there has been something of an uptick in support for McCain since he named Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The GOP candidate recently launched a redesigned McCainSpace, which Erick at TechCrunch reviewed with a jab at the candidate’s superannuation. He also expressed bewilderment at why both McCain and Obama feel it is necessary to create their own social networks given that large social networks like Facebook and MySpace already exist.

While I generally agree with Erick’s perspective for most businesses and organizations, in this case he’s flat wrong. The campaigns of the two major party candidates for President are by definition “big enough” to create a critical mass of interest that can make a standalone social network successful.

Like the Republican “all of the above” energy policy that supports increased drilling, conservation and development of renewable alternatives, the social networking strategy for national campaigns should involve both the general purpose sites like Facebook and a proprietary site. In this way, campaigns own the data and can avoid being in a position where a decision by Mark Zuckerberg or his MySpace counterpart would limit their ability to communicate with supporters. And when you create your own site, you have the freedom to add functionality not available in the general purpose sites.

It’s not “either/or;” it’s “both/and.” I’m a McCain supporter on Facebook, but I haven’t joined McCainSpace. Other people may not want to join Facebook, but are motivated enough by the presidential campaign to want to get involved somehow. If they go to JohnMcCain.com, they may just decide to join his social network as their introduction to social networking.

Although the McCain campaign has been behind in its adoption of Web 2.0 strategies, it’s doing fairly well in more traditional Internet campaigning. For example, when I searched for Joe Biden this evening on Google, here was the result page (click to enlarge).

Note that when you click the sponsored link that has the top position on the right side, it takes you to a place where you can see this ad (embedded from YouTube below):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDVUPqoowf8]

The McCain campaign has others of its ads (including this one that is 94 seconds long and couldn’t be used on broadcast TV) on its YouTube channel.

On the JohnMcCain.com site, as of this evening I saw this banner at the top of the page, which apparently offers different views of the site based on the user’s indication of voting intent (click the image to enlarge).

His site also has a McCain Nation section to encourage activism, a blog that publishes photos and campaign news (and also has embedded YouTube videos, and also has a Volunteer Action Center.

So, while the McCain campaign hasn’t attracted as big a following in the social networking sites, and hasn’t raised anything near the astronomical amounts Obama’s has through the Web and otherwise, it does appear to be closing the gap somewhat and doing some basic things right.

The polls seem to indicate that this race will be another extremely close one. It’s guaranteed to be historic, with either the first African-American president or the first woman VP.

I renew my call for someone on the other side of the aisle to provide a Social Media 302 course on the Obama campaign’s use of the Web.

Update: Scott Meis, on his Social Media Snippets blog, has provided a helpful overview of the Obama campaign’s web efforts. Thanks, Scott!

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