Blogs are still undiscovered by BEL20 Chief Executives. Our study shows none of them blogging, although CEOs of smaller companies are starting to engage. This opens a real possibility for first mover advantage and support from an active Belgian blog community.

Blogs make companies more human, a voice in the darkness and a way to reach out to your customers. There is also a possibility to engage with stories that affect a company’s reputation, build up visibility as well as real chance to get high search engine ranking. People will keep on telling their stories and by having their own blog, CEOs could tell their side, simply writing a blog helps to influence the message.

Most CEOs are aware (and maybe even a little afraid) of bloggers and yet they still hesitate to engage. There are nice arguments in the pro-blog camp given by Fiona Wash in the article “Why CEOs should learn to love the blogs”. There are also skeptics with arguments that CEOs should be busy with other activities, they aren’t journalists or PR departments frightened of what might be said, but is this not thinking from a different generation of command and control communication?

Corporate blogs are important and soon they will be even expected by clients. The situation is analogous with company websites a few years ago – in the early ‘90s very few companies had them, now it’s hard to imagine the world without them. “Without a blog as a part of your website, your company may appear walled off and disinterested in being open to comment and criticism”, says Debbie Weil in her book “The Corporate Blogging book”. (By the way thank you Debbie for the free copy of your book!)
If it is this important, there seems a real opportunity for someone to step up. Who knows, maybe there will be a blog launched by the time I finish this post…

We did a press release with Hill & Knowlton on blog buzz and the election results. It has generated a lot of interest and debate, I was surprised to hear it as a headline on the radio news. I wanted to blog about it earlier but anyway here it is so people can comment on our blog if they want…  

Bloggers beat polls in predicting elections: Yves Leterme most popular politician in the Blogosphere

Brussels, July 7, 2007 – A combined research by Attentio and Hill & Knowlton reveals that buzz on Belgian blogs was more accurate in predicting last months federal elections than most opinion polls. Attentio monitored how many times Belgian politicians and parties were mentioned on Belgian blogs two months ahead of the elections until day of elections, June 10th. By monitoring blogs before the elections the success of Jean-Marie Dedecker, Yves Leterme and Didier Reynders could have been predicted.

Yves Leterme and Didier Reynders beat their direct opponents:

Yves Leterme (CD&V / N-VA) received more buzz than former Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt (OpenVLD) and Johan Vande Lanotte (SP.a) hardly came close to the blogger buzz generated by the two others. Jean-Marie Dedecker (LDD) was the biggest surprise. Although his overall buzz was low it increased by a startling 275% between April and the elections in June. In that respect he defeats any other candidate.

The Blogging community on the French speaking side of Belgium wasn’t as active but still gave a strong indication of voters’ intentions. Didier Reynders (MR) was trailing di Rupo (PS) until the end of May and once he overtook his rival, he never looked back. Joëlle Milquet (CdH) was lagging behind until the last week before the elections when she pushed for the line, but came up way short of her other adversaries.

Blogs reveal trends not picked up by opinion polls or classical media:

“We monitored blogs in Belgium with one of our agency partners XGM in the run up to the Belgian federal elections on June 10th. Based on the results, trends appeared that were not picked up by the opinion polls and predictions published by many media. Analysing blogs and forums can be very powerful, predictive and explicative as many politicians and businesses are now discovering” says Simon McDermott, CEO of Attentio.

Even though former Prime Minister Verhofstadt scored a higher media buzz than his direct opponent Leterme, the latter beat Verhofstadt when it came to blog buzz. Media buzz is the sum of blog buzz and coverage on news sites. The third Flemish contender in the race for ‘Wetstraat 16’, Johan Vande Lanotte was not able to thrill the Belgian blogging community. Jean-Marie Dedecker, the biggest surprise on Election Day didn’t score extremely well, but he had a 400% increase in blog buzz compared to 296% for Leterme, his nearest opponent.

“It is interesting to see that blogs give such an accurate view of the outcome of elections. This is a clear indication that the impact of blogs becomes more significant and tangible,” says Tomas Vivijs, new media specialist with Hill & Knowlton Brussels. “Many of our clients are asking us how to deal with blogs. Our advice is to listen to the blogs first, i.e. know who, what and how they write about you, before engaging the Blogosphere by interacting on existing blogs or starting your own”

Vlaams Belang in the Blogosphere:

The other parties and their main candidates, battling for voters were not able to attract as much buzz as the main pretenders. Candidates from Vlaams Belang, the second party in Flanders, barely made a ripple in the sea of blogs. This might lead us to believe that similar to classic media, there is some sort of media silence around the far right party in the Blogosphere.

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We are sponsoring the Blog Business Summit which takes place in Chicago on the 17th - 19th of September. Thanks to Steve and Jason for their help so far.

I will be most interested in sessions around blogger engagement and the real picture of corporate blogging today.

On speakers, I have heard a lot about Robert Scoble but this will be first time to see him speak in person. Other speakers include Padmasree Warrior from Motorola and Matt Mullenweg the founder of Wordpress (thanks we love your software…).

I’ll be there, so if anyone would like to meet up, give me a shout.