A little while back, Josh Bernoff from Forrester posted research showing the relative trust a surveyed general population group had in various information sources. As it happened, corporate blogs were at the very bottom of the list in terms of trustworthiness, with personal blogs being third from the bottom.
This has lead, predictably, to a protracted conversation among bloggers and podcasters, ranging from a very good panel conversation with Bernoff and others on the For Immediate Release podcast back in mid-December to a post today by my friend Dave Fleet on his blog. Much of the focus in all this has been defensive, circling around the theme of, as Dave’s post title puts very well, “Blogs Aren’t Inherently Trustworthy.”
I agree with the basic point — blogs aren’t inherently anything, any more than a piece of paper is inherently trustworthy or not. The point that I feel is being missed by many is that this is about the perception of the general public and the fact that there’s relatively little discussion of WHY this perception might exist.
I think at least part of the answer requires a look in the mirror.
Perhaps those of us who are proponents of tools such as blogs have been overselling the simplicity of blogging. Is the message “anyone can have a blog” is being translated in the public imagination as “any IDIOT can have a blog”?!
It may be that the idea of being able to publish without filters, whether it’s corporate information or personal opinion, is causing the majority to think that those who wish to manipulate public perception (or simply those who have nothing important to say) are likely the primary authors of blogs. “If what someone had to say was truly important” they may think, “wouldn’t it be coming from a PROPER source, rather than just some blog?”
And lest this point of view be dismissed as anachronistic, I think it is telling that Wikipedia generally doesn’t accept blogs as reliable sources for their articles. It may be no coincidence that according to the same Forrester research, wikis such as Wikipedia were considered about twice as trustworthy as blogs, something that seems to have gone unnoticed in a lot of the conversation to date.
Is it perhaps time to back off the rhetoric on blogging a bit?
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I think part of the reason for the situation is decades of companies NOT being trustworthy – of saying one thing and doing another; of talking TO people, not with them and only even doing that when it suits them.
And, yes, the less scrupulous among us may be making blogs out to be just another channel to continue the “same old.” I’m no more likely to trust a faceless corporate blog than I am to trust an anonymous statement from that company.
Trust is earned. Most companies haven’t earned it.
Thanks Dave. Although I do agree with your point about companies earning trust, what do you think would account for “Personal blogs” being at 18% trustworthiness (only 2% higher than company blogs) while “Email from a company or brand” is at 28%?
Hey Jay. I would say it’s the same reason – to use a similar example to my earlier one, I’m no more likely to trust a random person in the street than I am to trust an anonymous company statement.
I’m guessing that people, when asked about blogs in general, don’t trust “blogs.” I don’t. However, if you ask someone about a particular blog of someone that they’ve read for a while, who they’ve grown to trust, that result may be different. Of course, that’s just speculation.
But why does it look like, based on the numbers, people have the HARDEST time trusting blogs in general? There seems to be a perception about blogs that they the least trustworthy way a company or individual can express themselves. THAT’S the part no one seems to want to address in the conversation. I suspect it’s because most of us can’t handle the fact that we’ve been doing a crappy job selling people on blogs and blogging.
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