SIIA Survey Results - Roughly Half Of IT Companies Have Blogs
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(www.businessandblogging.) Liz and I have been following the use of blogging as a tool by businesses of all sizes. Last month Liz looked at the question: How Many Small Businesses Have Blogs?
Liz was amazed, and so was I, to find that only five percent of businesses with less than 100 employees have a blog.
When the results of a Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) survey on the use of Web 2.0 was made public earlier this month, naturally I jumped on the story.
“The Software & Information Industry,” I thought to myself. “Surely this is a group that will have recognized the potential of blogs and put the technology to use.”
I fully expected to see that business blogging was the norm for companies in this niche. After all, there should be no technical barriers to blogging to players in this industry (not that blogging requires a great deal of technical expertise). I guess that I also expected that the group would be quick to jump onto something so easy to implement and so obviously beneficial.
I was wrong.
Only about 34% of the respondents in this group had user-generated content on their company website. Only 53.4%, or slightly more than half, had at least one blog.
Why isn’t the number much higher?
It’s hard to know for sure, but could procrastination be one of the answers? A significant number of IT companies without blogs indicated that they planned to have a blog in the near future.
In December of 2006, the DMNews Blog (a blog geared towards direct marketers), published a post titled, Four Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog Next Year. The post listed a lot of the benefits of blogging that we’ve covered here at Business and Blogging: attract search engines, interact with and engage customers, and increased sales, and so on.
My point is this: the post was written over a year ago about last year. The poster was right then and they are still right. The time to start a business blog is now, not at some nebulous future date that may never come.
So, what’s holding your business back? Is it procrastination? Fear of change? Misplaced priorities?
Embrace the future that you can have. Whatever is keeping you from blogging, overcome it now. Why not start your business blog today?
Tags: business-blogs, SIAA, SIAA survey, software and information industry, software company blogsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Blogging, Corporate, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0
6 opinions for SIIA Survey Results - Roughly Half Of IT Companies Have Blogs
Lisa Callsen
Feb 15, 2008 at 9:05 am
Laura,
Isn’t it amazing how others don’t think blogging is crucial. In our society, it’s all about fast fast fast, and a blog can give a business a personality that we might not capture when we are on the run.
I suppose I’ll ask you, the experts, do you think business don’t blog because they are too busy thinking about daily fires?
Laura
Feb 15, 2008 at 9:24 am
I think that you have an excellent point, Lisa. If a business expends all its energy on short-term problems, they have no time for long-term planning.
John Cass
Feb 15, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I am not surprised by these numbers, adoption rates of social media are slow. Yet, the 50% figure means technology adoption among tech companies is in the mainstream. Look at the fortune 500 blogging wiki numbers, only 10% of companies are blogging, most of the rest of industry is still in early adopter stage.
Laura
Feb 15, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Hi John!
You’re right. I would think that Fortune 500 companies, which are likely to have the best resources, would have a higher number.
I’m still a little surprised that tech companies aren’t more on the cutting edge of adopting social media and blogging, though.
John Cass
Feb 15, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Laura, tech companies definitely are at the cutting edge. Blogging is now in the mainstream for them, 50% of the fortune 500 companies that are blogging are tech, so that, and the numbers you quote above are a real indication that tech has really adopted blogs and social media. We might have a ways to go, but even if you look at the adoption rate of search engine optimization among companies I bet you will see some lower than expected rates.
Laura
Feb 15, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Hi John!
I see your point. Truthfully, I had somehow expected the tech company blogging rate to be much higher — somewhere in the neighborhood of 80%.
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