fortune 500 blogs research paper /introduction and ...€¦ · web viewi review every single blog...

1

Running head: FORTUNE 500 BLOGS

An Examination of the Dialogic Principle Within Fortune 500 Corporate Blogs

Paromita Ghosh, Traci Griggs, Eileen Searson

North Carolina State University

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 2

Abstract

This paper researched several aspects of Fortune 500 corporate blogs. First, we examined the

possibility that a rise or fall in a corporation’s Fortune 500 ranking might influence the use of

blogs. Secondly, we analyzed the dialogic principles evident in these blogs. Are these

corporations truly trying to engage their publics in conversation or are they simply going through

the motions? And third Lastly, we looked for any differences in the use of dialogic tools

according to types of industries within the Fortune 500 list. Overall, this study found that most of

America’s largest and most influential corporations are not utilizing the dialogic potential

inherent in blogs and therefore are not experiencing the full value from their blogging

experience.

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 3

An Examination of the Dialogic Principle Within Fortune 500 Corporate Blogs

The Rubbermaid blog began in 2008 to allow customers to comment on what they were reading on the Fortune 500 company's corporate Web site. John Dietzel and his team of blog contributors understand the motivation and conversation of blogging. "Our blog is about Rubbermaid, the people who use our products. We attempt to let the voice of the people come through. [...] We will respond within minutes once we receive a notification that you have posted something on the Web. On the weekends I check for comments, during the work week, I’d even rate us a 10. I review every single blog comment, and use Tweetdeck in twitter to follow the organizer community on Twitter" (Cass, 2008, para. 5).

Introduction

While the number of Fortune 500 companies with blogs continues to increase, an

examination of these official corporate blogs reveals that many of them take their first steps into

social media without a clear understanding of the landscape. Organizations of all types and sizes,

from the nation's top-grossing companies to tiny non-profits, are grappling with this emerging

phenomenon and eager to take a place at the table. However, it is apparent that many do not

understand that social media in general and blogging, in particular, are tools by which to

participate in a dialogue.

Among these social media tools, organizations have been quickest to embrace LinkedIn,

Facebook and Twitter. However, a recent study found organizations most eager to investigate

blogs as a future social media apparatus (Gordon, 2009). It's a trend that's been developing for

several years.

Fortune 500 companies, generally thought to be the pacesetters for the American business

community, saw a marked increase in corporate blogs over the past year. According to the

Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki (Cass, 2010), corporate blogs in the top echelon rose from

29 (6%) in 2008 to 79 (16%) in 2009. Barnes & Mattson (2009) claim a higher number citing 81

Fortune 500 corporations blogging in 2008. In early 2010, this study found 125 of these

corporations with official blogs or nearly 23%. .

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 4

A blog, abbreviated from Web-based log or Weblog, is “a personal publishing or content

management system on the Internet at which an author or multiple authors can publish

information on a variety of topics, which is often displayed in reverse-chronological order”

(Yang & Lim, 2009, p. 341). However, a major difference between blogs and corporate Web

sites is that readers can comment on content. If the blog author is listening and willing to respond

a conversation ensues. It is this conversation—this user-generated content—that forms the

essence of Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is most commonly defined as those sites which are made up of user-generated

content and which do not rely on organizations for information. Therefore, organizations might

easily be excluded from the conversation altogether because Web 2.0 relies on lateral networking

(Wyld, 2008).

This very real danger of losing control of the public dialogue surrounding their brand and

reputation may be one reason organizations choose to enter the realm of social media. Brian

Solis, principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning new media marketing agency says,

''conversations are taking place, with or without you. If you're not part of the conversation, then

you're leaving it to others to answer questions and provide information whether it's accurate or

incorrect'' (Gordon, 2009, p. 9).

Larger corporations are lagging behind smaller companies and non-profits in their

adoption of social media tools. Gordon (2009) contends that very small organizations (less than

10 employees) were 30% more likely to use social media than companies with more than 1,000

workers. This might lead one to ask, why such a low number of bloggers among the top grossing

companies? What is the benefit that is very apparent for smaller organizations but less urgent for

the highest grossing corporations in the U.S.?

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 5

Therefore, in this paper, we researched the possibility that a rise or fall in a corporation’s

Fortune 500 ranking might influence the use of dialogic features. Secondly, we analyzed the

dialogic principles evident in these blogs. Are these corporations truly trying to engage their

publics in conversation or are they simply going through the motions? And third, we looked for

any difference in the use of dialogic tools according to types of industries within the Fortune 500

ranking.

Literature Review

Until recently, there was an absence of scholarly research on the emerging phenomenon

of blogs. Much of the research within the past fifteen years has been by journalists and writers

(Hevem, 2004). From the late 1990s through 2005 (the preliminary years in blog research) many

of the communication studies analyzing blogs were in reference to identity and characteristics of

blog users, as well as journalistic applications. The interactive nature of blogs was the focus of

much of this study.

This interactivity is exhibited by the inclusion of author contact information

(synchronously) via ICQ, software, via instant messaging (IM), or (asynchronously) via e-mail.

Readers may also be invited to sign an online "guestbook," enter their e-mail addresses in a

database to receive announcements, or express their opinions via an online poll (Hevem, 2004).

Thus, the blog format allows for two-way symmetrical communication, which was lacking in

many other online applications up until this point.

Blogs were commended as an empowering technology which “leveled the publishing

playing field” and thus reduced technical barriers for publishing on the Web (Martindale &

Wiley, 2005). At first, personal or family blogs were the most widely published blogs, with

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 6

political blogs second (Whelan, 2003). In 1994, these online personal diaries emerged on topics

such as diets, movies, politics and sex (Sullivan, 2005).

Blogs also provided for juxtaposing news reporting and commentary from a diverse range

of sources. Blog writers challenged the narrow range of topics and sources featured in

mainstream news media (Gorgura, 2004). Blogs also allowed readers to compare and contrast a

multiplicity of competing truth claims (Gallo, 2004) thus providing another location to

communicate news. Blog users judged blogs as highly credible—more credible than traditional

sources. They rated traditional sources as moderately credible. Blog users rated blogs higher on

depth of information than they did fairness (Johnson & Kaye, 2004).

Additionally, early research focused analysis on the identity of the blogger within the

blogosphere. Hevem (2000) analyzed personal homepage construction in his examination of self-

expression by members of socially marginalized groups. He identified multiple structural

elements and forms of self-presentation that reflected a dialogical relationship. Research

regarding the relationship between the blog author and reader was also valued. Hevem (2004)

found that three elements focused on the self, internally or reflexively, whereas seven elements

involved a more external interest with "others"—persons, events, expressions, online resources,

and so forth. One element, embedding an image in the main channel, assumed either focus, thus

indicating the importance of the relationship between both the self and the external public.

The popularity of blogs grew quickly. A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life

Project (Rainie) reported that 32 million people read blogs. Blogs were recognized as the newest

communication tools that public relations professionals were exploring for communication with

their target publics (Hill & Dhanda, 2005; Smudde, 2005). As the blogosphere adds to its

growing population—a Synovate/Marketing Daily study (2007) found 4 out of 10 Americans

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 7

read blogs—organizations are harnessing the possibilities of blogging as a strategic

communication tool.

As early as 2005, Business Week featured corporate blogs, citing cases from GM and

Stoneyfield Farm (Cho, Soyoen; Huh & Jisu, 2007). Many leading companies like IBM, Sun

Microsystems, Intel, Quark and SAP have begun using a whole range of social networking tools,

including blogs, to promote increased communications between peers and their managers, where

‘‘employees can talk back to their bosses” (Vara, 2006). In 2006, only 19% of the Fortune 1000

employees moderately believed that corporate blogging was a credible tool for developing and

building brands (Nail, 2006), while a recent study (Gordon, 2009) found organizations showing

the most interest in blogs as a future tool to add to their PR arsenal.

A corporate blog is a unique form of blog as explored by public relations practitioners. It

is endorsed explicitly or implicitly by the company and posted by a person or a group of people

affiliated with the organization (Smudde, 2005). There have been mixed responses from larger

corporations to the blogging phenomena. Marken (2005) nevertheless observes, corporate blogs

have the effect of being an efficient communicative tool that is unique in its characteristic of

promoting two-way communication, as well as more community-based or even interpersonal

communication.

Kelleher and Miller (2006) also highlight the quality of enabling interpersonal

communication through blogs which is important for relationship building with an organization's

publics. The interconnectedness of the blogosphere also facilitates direct conversations among

individuals (Herring, Kouper, Paolillo & Sheidt, 2005). Direct conversations allow a

constituency to feel closely connected with organizations, hence a blog maintained by a

corporate CEO has the potential of bringing the different publics in direct interaction with the

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 8

organization. Kelleher and Miller (2005) found that people who read organizational blogs were

more likely to perceive the organization’s “conversational human voice” than those who only

access the traditional Web site. It is argued that the dialogic nature of blogging fits with Grunig

and Hunt’s (1984) ideal public relations model of two-way symmetrical communication which

provides scope for mutual respect and compromise (Smudde, 2005; Kelleher & Miller, 2006).

In a study of 31 corporate blogs listed on Fortune 500 Companies and Interbrand Top 100

Global Brands, researchers (Cho & Soyoen; Huh & Jisu, 2007) found a majority of the corporate

blogs to have interactive features for easy navigation and open two-way communication and

connections to related fields and people (social networks). However, most blogs in this study

were found to lack the “open” characteristic, lacking the visitor feedback feature. The most

popular blogroll links were the corporations’ own official Web sites. The study also conducted

an industry-based analysis and found that corporations in the computer, Internet, or consumer

electronics industry are more likely to operate corporate blogs than companies in other

industries.

TheorySymmetrical Model of Communication

The present study is grounded in the two-way symmetrical model of communication as

blogs are essentially a communication tool that ought to promote engagement and interactive

communication between an organization and its publics. Insight may be found in the evolution of

corporate communication styles. James Grunig (1983) defines four models of public relations

and their development over recent history. The first model is press agentry/publicity and

represents communication which is one-way (mechanistic) and often manipulative. It includes

publicity stunts (often in the form of pseudo events) and shameless exposure seeking. The

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 9

second model is public information, which is one-way communication that is a very factual

dissemination of information (like weather alerts).

The third is two-way asymmetrical. Under this model, the organization and constituents

interact but do so solely for the benefit of the organization. For example, focus groups are

conducted but only for the purpose of the organization gaining insight into how to get what they

want. The fourth model, and the one that is facilitated most readily by social media, is the two-

way symmetrical communication. Under this style of communication, organizations dialogue

with their publics to learn what their constituency wants and how to respond to their desires and

needs without pretense. Both the target publics and the organization receive equal benefit from a

two-way symmetrical communication model.

The symmetrical model of communication elaborates on the simple idea of two-way

communication (Grunig, J. E., 1992) and incorporates Thayer’s (1968) idea of diachronic

communication. The symmetrical idea is also stimulated by Carter’s (1965) and Chaffee and

McLeod’s (1968) conceptualization of co-orientation. Co-orientation represents a movement

away from theories of attitudes held by one person and research on how to develop messages to

change the orientations (attitudes) of a person (asymmetrical model of communication). Instead,

co-orientation focused on how two people, or two higher level systems (such as organizations

and publics; see J. E. Grunig & Stamm, 1973) oriented jointly to each other and to objects in

their environment.

The symmetrical model proposes that individuals, organizations, and publics should use

communication to adjust their ideas and behavior to those of others rather than to try to control

how others think and behave. Although segments of public relations literature criticize the wide

application of the two-way symmetrical model to all cultures and contexts of communication

FORTUNE 500 BLOGS 10

there is ample logical and empirical support for it after 20 years of research and theoretical

development and its applicability to blogging seems certain (for a review of the theoretical

development, and empirical evidence in support of the model see L. A. Grunig, J. E. Grunig, &

Dozier, 2002, chap. 8). There are many similar theories in the literature, including theories of

conflict resolution, dialogic communication, relationships, rhetoric, and postmodernism.

Dialogic Loop and Communication

In an attempt to understand an organization's use of blogging for building and

maintaining relationships, we would like to employ the theory of dialogic communication to this

study. The theory also naturally connects with the two-way symmetrical model of

communication. Dialogic communication has been studied as a useful lens for understanding the

relationship building between organizations and stakeholders. Kent and Taylor (1998) describe

dialogue as a negotiated exchange of ideas and opinions. The theory denotes a communicative

give and take which is important for healthy relationships. Communication is a goal in a dialogic

relationship and not just a way for maintaining a relationship (Buber, 1995). Dialogic

communication is important to public relations because dialogue is an essential material in two-

way symmetrical public relations (Grunig, J.E., 1992). A focus on the two-way cooperative

communication makes the practice ethical when either side is not aiming to control the

communication process (Habermas, 1990).

Dialogic relationships view communication as a mutual effort, which makes dialogic

communication an especially ethical approach to public dialogue and PR (Pearson, 1989).

Further, Yang and Lim (2009) suggest that a blog cannot exist without a dialogical thread and is

most effective when the blogger's 'dialogic self' is authentic and fully engaged in communication

with his or her publics. Blogging among other Web 2.0 applications especially facilitates the


dialogue style of communication through comments and community building among bloggers.

Kent and Taylor (1998) outlined five categories of features that are necessary for dialogic

relationship building in online communications. The five features include a dialogic loop, ease of

interface, conservation of visitors, generation of return visits and useful information for varied

publics. In our study we divided the category of 'usefulness' into 'usefulness for publics' and

'usefulness for media'.

Research questions (in methods)

Research Question #1: Is there a relationship between the movement of corporations on

the Fortune 500 list and the use of dialogic devices in official corporate blogs?

Research Question #2: Do the blogs support the five categories of the dialogic principle?

Research Question #3: Are there differences among types of industries on the Fortune

500 in regards to the use of the dialogic principle in their official corporate blog?

Methods

Our study builds on previous work by Kent and Taylor (1998) and Seltzer and Mitrook

(2007). In their paper, Kent & Taylor (1998) studied building of dialogic relationships through

the World Wide Web (WWW). By studying corporate Web sites, the researchers concluded that

dialogic communication created by the strategic use of the WWW is one way for organizations

to build relationships with publics. The researchers found the logical justification for their work

in the fact that the Web has great potential as a dialogic communication medium. Their paper

provides a theory-based, strategic framework to guide relationship building through the WWW.

Dialogic communication in their essay refers to any negotiated exchange of ideas and opinions.


Seltzer and Mitrook (2007), on the other hand, located a gap between the relationship-

building potential of traditional Web sites, the objectives of public relations practitioners, and the

actual design of organizational Web sites. Their study extends the investigation of online

relationship building through a content analysis of 50 environmental blogs. In their comparison

of blogs to traditional Web sites, they found that blogs incorporate dialogic communication

principles to a greater degree than traditional Web sites, potentially making them better suited for

online relationship building. Their paper concluded that two-way symmetrical communication

skills and knowledge of the organization and its publics are important factors for allowing blogs

to reach their full dialogic potential in online relationship building.

Building on the foundation of this previous work, this research focused on Fortune 500

company blogs and their level of sophistication in terms of the theories discussed earlier. A list

of Fortune 500 companies that have incorporated blogging as a communication strategy was

created by conducting a Google search of the organization name and the official blogs associated

with them. The search discovered that 125 of the Fortune 500 companies had at least one official

corporate blog, which means that 25% of organizations on the Fortune 500 list are blogging.

A detailed code sheet was used for analyzing the 125 blogs. The team added a number of

items to a previous code sheet to strengthen the operationalization of interactivity of the blogs

through the Dialogic Principle and the Two-Way Symmetrical Model of Communication. The

code sheet included several items under the following main criteria: ease of interface, availability

of useful information, conservation and return of visitors, creation of a dialogic loop and design

aspects of the blog. In order to establish intercoder reliability, three researchers individually

coded nine randomly selected Fortune 500 company blogs. Minimum acceptable intercoder

reliability scores were secured.


Methods for Research Question #1: To calculate the movement of a Fortune 500

company on the list published every year in June, the 2009 ranking was taken, and then the "year

it started" ranking was subtracted. So, hypothetically, if Walmart was ranked 5 when it started

and is now 1, then it scored a -4 (1 - 5 = -4). Negative values indicated that it "moved up" the

list (up meaning closer to #1--not as in its ranking number was higher. So, a positive value (say

moving from 200 when it started to 350 now (350-200 = 150) would indicate that the Fortune

500 ranking fell (moved down the list away from #1). For those companies whose ranking did

not change, they stayed the same and were coded as a third type. So the codes were: move up,

move down, stay same. Refer to Table 1 for details. Not all organizations are included in this

table as in some cases it was not possible to determine when the blog was started. Organizations

which were not on the Fortune 500 list when they started their blog but presently are, were coded

as ‘move up’.

Methods for Research Question 2 & 3: The blogs were divided into seven types of

industries based on previous research categories of Fortune 500 blogs (industrial/manufacturing,

telecommunications, consumer, utilities, banking/financial, information technology, and

transportation). Descriptive statistics were calculated (mean values and standard deviations for

the indices and were found by converting “yes” to 100, “no” to 0; then averaging). A one-way

ANOVA was conducted to calculate differences by groups.

Research Results

Movement of Corporations

The first research question sought to determine the relationship between movement of

corporations on the Fortune 500 list and dialogic features of their official corporate blog. A one-


way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was calculated using the ranking change as the independent

variable and the six dialogic characteristics as the dependent variables. There was no statistical

significance found in any of the tests.

a. Dialogic loop: F (3,118) = 1.18, MS = 780.10, p = .319b. Ease of Interface : F (3, 118) = 1.56, MS = 879.49, p = .203c. Conservation of Visitors: F(3, 118) = 0.373, MS = 173.76, p = .773d. Return visitors: F (3, 118) = 1.13, MS = 858.15, p = .341e. Useful for publics: F (3, 118) = 0.76, MS = 617.16, p = .517f. Useful for Media : F (3, 118) = 0.45, MS = 358.20, p = .640

Additionally, the study found that: 37.6% (N=47) of the companies moved up on the

Fortune 500 list since they started blogging; 21.6% (N=27) moved down on the Fortune 500 list,

and 38.4% (N=48) of the companies were ranked the same during data collection as they were

when they began blogging (Table 1).

Table 1Occurrence of Dialogic Features by Fortune 500 movement

Dialogic Features

Total

Companies that Moved Up on

Fortune 500 List(n = 47)

Companies that Moved Down on the Fortune 500

List(n = 27)

Companies that Stayed the same on Fortune 500

List(n=48)

Dialogic Loop 53.55 (25.73) 54.35 (29.27) 52.23 (22.61) 53.13 (23.48)Ease of interface 72.13 (18.36) 70.23 (21.79) 66.52 (18.21) 75.53 (15.80)

Conservation of Visitors 81.97 (21.42) 83.40 (20.98) 80.77 (22.26) 80.83 (21.81)

Return Visits 56.33 (27.62) 55.73 (28.27) 51.89 (24.20) 58.30 (28.46)Usefulness to Publics 45.10 (28.36) 48.14 (27.94) 41.00 (26.64) 43.62 (29.82)

Usefulness to Media 62.83 (28.15) 60.28 (26.56) 61.97 (27.21) 65.83 (30.43)

The Dialogic Principle

The second research question dealt with the dialogic principle found in Fortune 500

blogs. The six dialogic features: dialogic loop (M= 53.55, SD= 25.73), ease of interface (M=


72.13, SD = 18.36), conservation of visitors (M= 81.97, SD= 21.42), generation of return visits

(M= 56.33, SD= 27.62), useful information for publics (M= 45.10, SD= 28.36), and useful

information for media (M= 62.83, SD= 28.15) were all measured.

Foundationally, data was collected highlighting several general characteristics about the

blogs. The typical Fortune 500 company blog had been in existence for just over two years (M =

25.14 months, SD = 19.23). The mean number of posts made on the blogs between January 1 and

March 15, 2010 was (M = 37.02, SD = 65.2). The majority of the Fortune 500 company blogs

linked directly to the company’s Web site (66.4%, N=83). And most of the blogs utilized an

outside URL, rather than being hosted on the company’s Web site (59.2%, N= 74).

Dialogic loop.

The dialogic principle was measured by using the six features outlined above. In relation

to the dialogic loop, data was collected regarding how visitors can comment on Fortune 500

company blog posts. Many of the blogs support feedback by allowing replies to blog posts

(83.9%, N= 104). However, not many of the blog authors make a practice of replying to

comments (51.2%, N= 64). The ability to send private messages to blog author/sponsors via

email was not prevalent as less than a third (32%, N= 40) of the blogs allowed for this type of

interpersonal communication. Similarly, not many of the blogs (31.2%, N= 39) provided the

opportunity for readers to vote on issues. However, many (60.8%, N= 76) provided regular

information through email subscription updates. The dialogic loop was further promoted in a

large number of these blogs (63.2%, N= 79) through the sharing of links to the company’s social

media accounts such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Twitter (65%, N= 81), Facebook

(50%, N= 63), and Youtube (25%, N= 31) were the most popular.


Ease of interface.

With respect to ease of interface, the majority of Fortune 500 blogs (68.8%, N=86) had

an archive system visible on their front screen indicating where one can view past blog postings

by month or year. Search engines were found on a large majority of the sites (86.3%, N=107).

Blogs also used categories or tags to organize and group different posts together by topics

(77.6%, N=97), particularly if there were multiple authors contributing to the blog. The majority

of blogs (60.8%, N= 76) also provided brief listings of recent entries making it easy to access

newer posts.

Conservation of visitors.

Under conservation of visitors, Most of the blogs had been updated (76.4%, N= 94)

within the past 2 weeks leading up to data collection period and a great majority (93.6%, N=117)

indicated the date of the latest blog post. This consistent maintenance promotes site visits and

participation. The presence of important and useful information on the front page of the blog

(79.2%, N=99) is also an important factor in attracting and retaining visitors to a blog.

Generation of return visits.

The Fortune 500 blogs were not as adept at encouraging return visits. Only half (52.4%,

N=65) issued an explicit invitation to return to the blog. Nearly the same number (52%, N=65)

issued a request for visitors to bookmark the blog, add it to favorites, or save it as their home

page. However, a large percentage of the blogs (91%, N=113) supported the functionality of an

RSS feed to subscribe to the blog.

Useful information for publics vs. media.

Under the category of useful information, only half (51.2%, N=64) made use of audio

and video to support their posts. Nearly 70% (69.4%, N=86) clearly stated who the blog’s


intended audience was. Just over half (57.3%, N=71) provided any kind of contact information

for customer service specialists or communication personnel within the company. This includes

even a generic email address. The study distinguished between useful information for publics

and useful information for media. Corporate blogs were found to provide far more resources that

might be of interest to the news media (M= 62.83, SD= 28.15) than for their publics (M= 45.10,

SD= 28.36).

Difference between Industries

The third research question sought to determine if there were dialogic differences

between industries. The Fortune 500 company blogs were separated into seven industry

categories: industrial manufacturing (13.6% N= 17), telecom (7.2%, N=9), consumer (37.6%,

N= 47), utilities (5.6%, N=7), banking (10.4%, N=13), IT (20.8%, N=26), and transportation

(4.8%, N=6). There was no statistical significance found in this test F(6, 117) = 0.668, MS –

450.89, p= 0.675, however there were notable variations among the categories that might be

revealed through more sophisticated statistical testing than was available to this research group at

the time of this paper. Please refer to Table #2 for the occurrence of dialogic features by Fortune

500 industry categories.


Table 2Occurrence of Dialogic Features by Fortune 500 industry categoriesDialogic Features Industry Category

Industrial Manufacturi

ngTelecomm Consumer Utilities Banking IT Transport

Ease of interface

M 75.00SD (21.65)

M 61.11SD (30.90)

M 69.02SD (24.26)

M 78.57 SD (26.73)

M 75.00SD (32.27)

M 75.00SD (18.71)

M 70.83SD (10.21)

Usefulness to Media

74.26 (26.69)

56.94 (26.59)

62.50 (30.13)

50.00 (35.36)

56.25 (27.44)

63.07 (24.24)

62.50 (28.02)

Usefulness to Publics

44.12 (29.02)

34.38 (24.78)

49.73 (30.22)

32.14 (33.74)

50.00 (25.52)

41.83 (24.73)

42.50 (30.10)

Return Visits

57.75 (25.70)

56.57 (22.16)

57.58 (30.58)

42.86 (26.62)

51.24 (30.22)

58.55 (25.86)

56.36 (20.73)

Dialogic Loop

47.06 (27.15)

59.26 (25.15)

53.62 (26.51)

40.48 (21.21)

55.13 (30.72)

55.77 (22.58)

61.11 (27.22)

Conserv. of Visitors

85.00 (18.62)

75.56 (24.04)

79.57 (23.03)

71.43 (32.37)

84.62 (20.25)

86.15 (17.68)

86.67 (10.33)

Discussion

The mean scores found in reference to the presence of dialogic features, are relatively

low except for ease (which is design structure of the blogs) and conservation of visits but the

information, dialogic loop, and usefulness to the general public remain relatively low. The

inequality found in these dialogic features may be attributed to several reasons. Ease, which

includes archives of posts, the presence of main links to the rest of blog, a search engine, and low

reliance on graphics may be accepted best blog design practices. Blogs are likely to also be

created using pre-formed templates, which is thus likely to already include a search bar feature or

archival post feature. Thus, the company simply customizes the template to reflect their

organization.

Similarly, conservation of visitors was examined through the following features: the

placement of key information on the front page, post updates within the past two weeks, short


loading time, use of tags to categorize posts, and indication of last update. Some of these

features, such as indication of last update, use of tags, and the placement of key information can

also be influenced by design template usage rather than strategic planning. However, the dialogic

features, which displayed lower mean values, were more dependent on active author/sponsor

participation. For example, the opportunity for a visitor to send a private message to an

author/sponsor via email was one of the least utilized features on the blogs. This is likely due to

the fact that this would generate extra effort for the author/sponsor who then must reply to the

message.

Fortune 500 companies are considered national and international business leaders, thus

one would think that these companies would uphold high standards of communication. Because

of the low level of dialogic features found on their official corporate blogs, it seems imperative

to suggest that best practices be considered and implemented on Fortune 500 blogs, including the

incorporation of theory in design and maintenance, and evaluation. This study did not collect

data to determine the frequency of blog evaluation, however, due to the variety and inconsistency

in the dialogic features, we believe that it is important to mention the utility of evaluation.

Evaluation allows corporations to see how messages are being received by stakeholders, view

visitor habits on the blog (i.e. how much time people spend on your blog), and adjust blog

features to better serve targeted publics. Incorporating these best practices may help promote

blog success, longevity, transparency and even crisis prevention.

Fortune 500 companies seemed more concerned with providing resources for the news

media than they were in speaking to and meeting the needs of their constituency. This shows an

inherent misunderstanding of the core purpose and dialogic nature of blogs since these official

blogs are being used, essentially, as easily modified Web sites. This is not necessarily an unwise


use of the company’s Web presence. Frequent updates on news and information may be

attractive to media outlets because current, comprehensive information is found in one location.

However, it does not fulfill the dialogic function for which a blog is designed. Thus, company

leaders believe the organization is getting the benefit of a blog, without participating in the

conversation that makes it such a valuable avenue for connecting with publics.

Therefore, a logical next question would be this: If blogs are a medium that promotes

interactivity and engagement, within it’s very design structure, why did we find low mean scores

and a lack of interactive statistical significance? Perhaps this is because the creators and

maintainers of these blogs are not following dialogic theory. As scholars, we know that the

absence of theory is likely to be detrimental to any communication campaign. However, many

practitioners and blog designers (who may be Information Technology or other non-

communication professionals) do not often follow communication theory.

It is also a possibility that individuals may have had intentions of upholding two-way

symmetrical communication at the inception of the blog. However, that enthusiasm may have

dwindled as time passed and they may now realize that they have underestimated the time and

work commitment needed for such activities as replying to post comments, promoting feedback,

conserving visitors, etc. In addition, excitement about the blog may wane if the intended publics

do not readily comment on blog posts. This may not be a reflection on the articles posted, but

rather, an indication that there needs to be increased marketing for the blog and/or education of

publics on how to participate in blog discussion.

Additionally, widely different variations among industries were found. We suggest that

these be further explored. The reason for lack of statistical significance among industry blog

usage among Fortune 500 companies is not the scores themselves but the inconsistent sums for


accurate comparison (e.g. transportation has six, utilities has seven, Information Technology has

26, and consumer has 47). Thus, it is difficult to compare blogs across industries since there are

unequal sample sizes and low frequencies in some categories. The discrepancy in blog usage

may be due to cultural norms and practices within specific industries, which influence acceptable

levels of interactivity and transparency with stakeholders. Therefore, social media may be less

valued in some industries and consequently less frequently utilized as a strategic two-way

communication tool.

Dissimilarities in blog usage may also relate to the individual industries publics; perhaps

their publics’ likelihood to utilize blogs influences the industries’ construction of them.

Therefore, if you conducted research on publics in your industry and received data indicating

that your publics are not likely to read blogs then you would be less likely to create a blog to

communicate with them. A particular industry’s frequency of blog creation may also relate to

the type of transactions that the company makes. For example, an industry that primarily runs

business to business commerce transactions may be less likely to blog, as they are not as

concerned with interacting with diverse publics as business to consumer companies most likely

are. Similarly, industries with more publicly traded companies may be more likely to blog in an

effort to foster transparency. Perceived risk and crisis prevention are also reasons why some

industries may blog more than others.

Lastly, blog frequency may also relate to competition within industry, or lack thereof. If

a competitor is blogging and appears to be having some success with it, others in that industry

may be likely to follow suit out of fear of appearing irrelevant or out of sync with modern

communication methods. There are many possible reasons for unequal blog representation across


industries. We recommend that future research explore these suggestions further to enhance the

understanding of blog usage among America’s largest and most influential companies.

Overall, this study found that most of America’s largest and most influential corporations

are not utilizing the dialogic potential inherent in blogs and therefore are not experiencing the

full value from their blogging experience. Much of this misunderstanding and misuse of blogs

may be due to the relative newness of this communication technology. It is also likely a bi-

product of the continuing struggle for corporations to achieve a level of transparency that is risky

and not easy to incorporate into traditional business models.

Limitations

There were several limitations to this research. We suggest that anyone attempting to

further this study or engage in similar Fortune 500 blog research take these factors into

consideration. First, the Fortune 500 list comes out each July. Therefore, our research was based

on the 2009 list. We imagine that this has significant impact on our findings since many

companies (no matter how successful they previously were) have been impacted by the downturn

in the U.S. and global economies. Thus, there may be some considerable fluctuations in ranking

between the 2009 and 2010 lists, especially in relation to those particular industries which may

have been more influence than others.

Another limitation relates to the length of time over which the blogs were evaluated. The

study viewed blog posts within a ten-week time period. This may not have been enough time to

adequately analyze trends on these blogs.

Another limitation was that the Alexa blog ranking service, used to collect blog usage

data, was inconsistent. We attempted to identify both the Alexa ranking of the blogs as well as

data on the average visit time. This was difficult to do because Alexa’s rankings often defaulted


to ranking the corporate Web site and not the blog. Clearly, this was not an adequate method for

gaining data on blog usage and we thus omitted this data from our results.

Additionally, some companies stopped actively blogging (creating a post at least once

every two weeks) a few months prior to our analysis. However, we still incorporated them in our

analysis because we did not know when/if the company would start blogging again. Therefore,

the inclusion of these outdated blogs may have influenced our findings. We suggest that the

standardization in quality of blogs, in reference to blog maintenance, be considered for future

blog analysis.

Lastly, our content analysis was based on previous blog research by Kent and Taylor

(1998) and Seltzer and Mitrook (2007), which was quite extensive. We then grafted in several

questions that were more relevant to our specific research. Although this wealth of research may

be a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge on Fortune 500 blogs, coding may have

been less time-consuming and more efficient if we had simplified our survey questions and

tailored them to our specific research questions. We hope that the disclosure of these limitations

will aid subsequent blog research.


References

Barnes, N. G. & Mattson, E. (2009). The Fortune 500 and Blogging: Slow and Steady

and Farther Along than Expected. Retrieved Feb. 9, 2010, from Center for

Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, North

Dartmouth, MA. Web site:

http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/fortune500.cfm.

Buber, M. (1995). Elements of interhuman. In J. Stuart (Ed.), Bridges not walls

(pp. 509-519). Reading MA: Addison Wesley.

Carter, R. F. (1965). Communication and affective relations. Journalism Quarterly, 42, 203–212.

Cass, J. (2008). Rubbermaid - a Corporate Blog That Organizes the World. Retrieved May 3,

2010, from PR Communications Blog. Web site:

http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/2008/12/rubbermaid-a-corporate-blog-that-

organizes-the-world.html

Cass, J. (2010). Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. Retrieved March 25. 2010, from

http://www.socialtext.net/bizblogs/index.cgi

Cho, S., & Huh, J. (2007). Corporate Blogs as a Public Relations Tool: A Content

Analysis Applying the Relational Maintenance Framework. Conference Papers –

International Communication Association, 1.

Four of 10 Americans Read Blogs, One-Third of Those Click on Ads.(2007). Retrieved Apr. 22,

2010, from Synovate/Marketing Daily. Web site:

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/four-of-10-americans-read-blogs-one-third-

of-those-click-on-ads-1507

http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/four-of-10-americans-read-blogs-one-third-

http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/2008/12/rubbermaid-a-corporate-blog-that-


Gallo, J. (2004). Weblog Journalism: between infiltration and integration, in: Minnesota

Blog Collective (Ed.), Into the Blogosphere: rhetoric, community, and culture of

weblogs, http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/weblog_journalism.html, retrieved

February 1, 2005.

Gordon, J. (2009). The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications. Retrieved

Feb. 9, 2010, from Social Media Today. Web site:

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/99991

Gorgura, Heather (2004). Warblogging Networks: online spheres of dissensus, paper \

presented to the Annual Convention of the Association of Internet Researchers, Toronto,

Canada, October, 2004.

Grunig, J. E.,&Stamm, K. R. (1973). Communication and coorientation of collectivities.

American Behavioral Scientist, 16, 567–591.

Grunig, J. E. (1983). Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Association for

Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Organizations, Environments,

and Models of Public Relations. Corvalis, OR.

Grunig, J. E. (1992). Symmetrical systems of internal communication. In J. E. Grunig (Ed.),

Excellence in public relations and communication management (pp. 531–576). Hillsdale,

NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Grunig, L. A., Grunig, J. E., & Dozier, D. M. (2002). Excellent public relations and effective

organizations: A study of communication management in three countries. Mahwah, NJ:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communicative action. Cambridge:

MIT Press.

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/99991


Herring, S.C., Kouper, I., Paolilo, J.C., Scheidt, L.A., Tyworth, M., Welsch, P., Wright,

E., & Yu., N. (2005). Conversations in the blogosphere: An analysis "from the

bottom up." Proceedings of the Thirty-eighth Hawaii International Conference on

System Sciences (HICSS-38). Los Alamitos: IEEE Press.

Hevem, V. W. (2000, June). Alterity and self-presentation on the Web. Paper presented at the

First International Conference on the Dialogical Self, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Hevem, V. (2004). Threaded Identity in Cyberspace: Weblogs & Positioning in the Dialogical

Self. Identity, 4(4), 321-335. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Hill, R. & Dhanda, K. (2004). Globalization and Technological Achievement: Implications for

Macromarketing and the Digital Divide. Journal of Macromarketing, 24(2), 147-155.

Johnson, T., & Kaye, B. (2004). Wag the blog; How reliance on traditional media and the

Internet influence credibility perceptions of weblogs among blog users. Journalism &

Mass Communication Quarterly, 81(3), 622-642. Retrieved from Academic Search

Premier database.

Kelleher, T., & Miller, B. (2006). Organizational Blogs and the Human Voice: Relational

Strategies and Relational Outcomes. Journal of Computer-Mediated

Communication, 11(2), 395-414.

Kent, M., & Taylor, M. (1998). Building dialogic relationships through World Wide

Web, Public Relation Review, 24, 321-334.

Marken, A. (2005). To blog or not to blog. That is the question? Public Relations

Quarterly, 31-33.

Martindale, T., & Wiley, D. (2005). Using Weblogs in Scholarship and Teaching. TechTrends:

Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, 49(2), 55-61. Retrieved from


Academic Search Premier database.

Nail, J. (2006). Don't try to beat the blogs: Integrating new media tactics, influence

into traditional reporting. Public Relations Tactics, p. 20.

Pearson, R. (1989). Business ethics as communication ethics: Public relations practice

and the idea of dialogue. In C. Botan & V. Hazelton, Jr. (Eds.), Public relations

theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Rainie, L. (2005). The state of blogging. Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Retrieved February 8, 2010, from http://www.pewinternet.org.

Seltzer, T., & Mitrook, M. (2007). The dialogic potential of weblogs in relationship building.

Public Relations Review, 33(2), 227-229.

Smudde, P. (2005). Blogging, Ethics and Public Relations: A Proactive and Dialogic

Approach. Public Relations Quarterly, 50(3), 34-38.

Sullivan, C. (2005). Diaries, on-line diaries, and the future loss to archives; or, blogs

and the blogging bloggers who blog them. The American Archivist, 68, 53-73.

Thayer, L. (1968). Communication and communication systems. Homewood, IL: Irwin.

Vara, E. P. (2006). Corporate Social Responsibility in Latin America. Journal of Corporate

Citizenship, 21, 61-69.

Whelan, David (2003) In a Fog About Blogs, American Demographics, 25, pp. 223.

Wyld, D. C. (2008). Management 2.0: A primer on blogging for executives. Management

Research News, 31(6), 448-483.

Yang, S., & Lim, J. (2009). Journal of Public Relations Research. The Effects of Blog-mediated

Public Relations on Relational Trust, 21(3), 341-359.

http://www.pewinternet.org/

fortune 500 blogs research paper /introduction and ...€¦ · web viewi review every single blog...

Documents