We’re like, so over the whole ROI thing

A while back, I posted about commercial speech and blogging - a hot topic in terms of what risks are associated with the institutional use of blogs. Complementing the risk question is the discussion of what benefits blogging has in a corporate context, apart from “me too” pressure associated with the social media craze. The return issue is also brought up in this Computer World article, in which author Heather Havenstein describes the efforts of network performance support provider NetQoS (blog).

At such companies, executives or full-time in-house bloggers like Boyko are writing posts. Although the goal is still to raise the profile of a company, the new-style blogs often tackle unconventional topics that may not have an obvious effect on businesses’ bottom lines.

The ROI question (see discussion here and here) remains impossibly fuzzy, at least from where I’m standing*. Will we ever have a way of measuring hard return on something like trust, presence or influence? I doubt it. From my vantage point, however, blogs have fairly little impact on anything that’s short-term, because they rely on network effects to become influential. They also tend to be identified very strongly with the individual writer, usually more than with the theme or topic of the blog (though this varies). That’s why it’s so hard to launch a good marketing blog: they tend to have little topical breadth** because the focus is usually on the product and the author is either invisible or has no room for personal expression***.

* When talking about public-facing blogs. The ROI of internal knowledge blogs could be slightly easier to measure.

** Of course, this very much depends on your product.

*** In a blog such as this one.