http://corpblawg.ynada.com/2006/08/28/a-first-attempt-at-a-categorization-ii Cornelius Puschmann on corporate and institutional blogging, linguistics, open access and other things that interest him. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:17:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 http://corpblawg.ynada.com/2006/08/28/a-first-attempt-at-a-categorization-ii#comment-1554 CorpBlawg » Image blogs: Tales of Pride and Self-Flagellation Tue, 26 Sep 2006 10:48:30 +0000 http://corpblawg.ynada.com/2006/08/28/a-first-attempt-at-a-categorization-ii#comment-1554 [...] I’m taking a closer look at four sources that I have classified as image blogs (see one,two). My assumption is that the main purpose of these blogs is to influence the public perception of a company in ways which are only tangentially related to the goal of increasing sales. [...] [...] I’m taking a closer look at four sources that I have classified as image blogs (see one,two). My assumption is that the main purpose of these blogs is to influence the public perception of a company in ways which are only tangentially related to the goal of increasing sales. [...]

]]> http://corpblawg.ynada.com/2006/08/28/a-first-attempt-at-a-categorization-ii#comment-4 CorpBlawg » But really, why not? Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:37:19 +0000 http://corpblawg.ynada.com/2006/08/28/a-first-attempt-at-a-categorization-ii#comment-4 [...] Interesting tidbit: while I’m not quite ready to tout it as evidence, my metrics on both blogs correlate with her observation in an interesting way. Schwartz uses personal and possessive plural pronouns (”we”, “our”) more frequently than Baseler. His style could be characterized as somewhat more involved than Baseler’s, which could in turn have an effect on reception. Note that I’m careful about drawing any conclusions. Even if I had more data (which I don’t, at least not yet), how interesting one writes is not quantifiable through language analysis. Interestingly enough though, Weil goes into a similar direction when she calls material written by PR people “vetted”, “reviewed”, and “corporate speak”, which is in opposition to the maxim of “telling the back story”. After discussing community building blogs (which are similar to what I’ve labelled industry blogs), Jones brings up the question of return on investment for blogging. Weil can, of course, provide no answer to the question of “whether blogs work”, but suggests that the influence exerted by blogs is beneficial and thus profitable. This is at least somewhat problematic. A catchy phrase such as “return on influence” actually underlines the problem of not knowing anything about the effects of blogging. When talking about “return on investment”, the investment part of the equation is known, it’s the return that we’re interested in. “Return on influence”, by contrast, is an equation with two unknown variables - we neither know the return, nor whether there is influence, nor how closely the two are related. I wouldn’t deny that blogs may have an influence on consumer perception, only that this relationship can be easily characterized as “return on anything” (ROA). [...] [...] Interesting tidbit: while I’m not quite ready to tout it as evidence, my metrics on both blogs correlate with her observation in an interesting way. Schwartz uses personal and possessive plural pronouns (”we”, “our”) more frequently than Baseler. His style could be characterized as somewhat more involved than Baseler’s, which could in turn have an effect on reception. Note that I’m careful about drawing any conclusions. Even if I had more data (which I don’t, at least not yet), how interesting one writes is not quantifiable through language analysis. Interestingly enough though, Weil goes into a similar direction when she calls material written by PR people “vetted”, “reviewed”, and “corporate speak”, which is in opposition to the maxim of “telling the back story”. After discussing community building blogs (which are similar to what I’ve labelled industry blogs), Jones brings up the question of return on investment for blogging. Weil can, of course, provide no answer to the question of “whether blogs work”, but suggests that the influence exerted by blogs is beneficial and thus profitable. This is at least somewhat problematic. A catchy phrase such as “return on influence” actually underlines the problem of not knowing anything about the effects of blogging. When talking about “return on investment”, the investment part of the equation is known, it’s the return that we’re interested in. “Return on influence”, by contrast, is an equation with two unknown variables - we neither know the return, nor whether there is influence, nor how closely the two are related. I wouldn’t deny that blogs may have an influence on consumer perception, only that this relationship can be easily characterized as “return on anything” (ROA). [...]

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