• Culture: If a company has particular cultural traits worth revealing or a bad reputation it wants to repudiate, blogging can be an attractive option.
• Transparency: Critical to establishing credibility and trust with an audience. People want to see an honest portrayal of a company and know that there are not ulterior motives behind the blog. Blog audiences respect a willingness to disclose all points of view on a subject.
• Time: It takes a lot of time to set up, research and write a quality blog. Companies need to identify a person who has the time or whose schedule is freed up to make the time, or need to engage a group of people to share the responsibility.
• Dialogue: A company’s ability and willingness to engage in a dialogue with their customer base about topics that the customer base is interested in is critical to its blogging success.
• Entertaining writing style and personalization: A blogger’s writing style and how much they are willing to reveal about their life, experience and opinions brings human interest to a blog, helps build a personal connection with readers and will keep people reading.

In het onderzoek is ook gekeken naar de opzet van de weblogs en welke bijdrage dit heeft op het succes. De belangrijkste factoren in deze fase zijn:

• Strategic planning: Important to develop clear blogging goals in advance.
• Blogger selection: Important to pick someone who is, among other things, open to listening to the audience, has a passion for the topic, is a good writer and has a friendly approach.
• Reading other blogs: Critical to read other blogs in your industry to gain understanding of your industry’s blogging community.
• Practice with an internal blog before going external: Helps employees become familiar with blogging and makes for a smoother transition to the external community.

Het volledige onderzoeksrapport is online beschikbaar via scoutblogging.com. Leden van marketingfacts kunnen het onderzoeksrapport ook als pdf-bestand downloaden.