March 29, 2024

So what’s holding the Fortune 500 back from blogging?

Posted by: of BlogWrite for CEOs on 01/20/06

David Kline, co-author of one of the handful of books published thus far on blogging (Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business and Culture) emailed me this week to ask for a quote for the article he’s working on about what’s holding the F500 back from blogging and what it will take for blogging to go mainstream. He referenced the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki’s stat that only 3% of F500s are blogging. I responded with the following mini rant:

Fear & blogging on the blogosphere Long Tail
(with apologies to Hunter S. Thompson)

Fear is the single most important thing holding corporate America back from embracing blogging. Fear of being open, fear of a two-way conversation, fear of not being able to control the message, fear of the time commitment. Just makes sense. If you put blogging in the basket of corporate communications it runs absolutely antithetical to so-called current best practices.

So what will make this change? Again, fear. Fear of not embracing the new media technologies which so many consumers are now adopting, whether it’s a video iPod or a blog. Fear of not being where your customers are. Which, increasingly, is online.

Well, that’s my thought for the day. Now back to cleaning up the mess on my desk… Oh, and don’t misunderstand. I’m not being critical of the F500s efforts thus far to launch blogs. Just realistic.

2 comments for So what’s holding the Fortune 500 back from blogging?

  1. How about good’ol fear of change period? Many think they will be re-inventing the wheel, not realizing they would just be making it better.

    Comment by Rick Resnick — January 23, 2006 @ 9:58 am


  2. Debbie,
    You are correct in your observations about the “Fear Factor”. I recently spoke to a large group of Fortune 500 execs about Blogging last week in NYC. That was one of the big issues that kept coming up.

    I just did a long post about this here. http://blog.leveragedpromotion.com/item/117696

    Rodney Rumford

    Comment by Rodney — March 5, 2006 @ 3:19 am


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