Steady Growth on the US Corporate Blogging Front

Fifteen per cent of America's Fortune 500 companies use a blog to communicate with consumers and stakeholders, according to a new study by PR giant, Burson Marsteller.

PR Week reports that this figure represents an increase of 270 per cent compared to when Wired Magazine and Socialtext began tracking Fortune 500 blogs in December, 2005. The Wired wiki of Fortune 500 blogs reportedly counted 58 of them in as of May this year.

The BM survey included only active blogs that were updated during the 12 months ending March, 2008.

Interestingly, it the larger companies are getting involved in blogging in bigger numbers than their smaller counterparts, with a third (32 per cent) of the Fortune 50 maintaining blogs compared to 16 per cent of the Fortune 201-250; just two per cent of Fortune 451-500 have a blog.

While the blogging trend is obviously on the 'up', it appears that mainstream US corporations are quite slow in embracing the medium. Maybe this can be put down to entrenchment of long-held views re 'controlling the message', and that a willingness to join the broader market conversation is still causing angst at C-level.

According to the study, the top industries for blogging are technology and internet services/retailing.

Also posted on prwarrior.typepad.com