Blogs for corporate communication – State of the Art and Diffusion

Since 2006, blogs have become evident in the context of corporate communication throughout the German speaking countries. Since the beginning, the numbers of blogs have risen significantly. The authors of this paper have carried out an examination of the use of corporate blocks throughout different branches. Numbers of blog posts and numbers of comments were evaluated and brought into relation with different time frames, such as the times of the year or the lifecycle of a blog. The methodology was based on manual collection of data and the support of a self developed web robot. It was also examined whether the blogs are used in a multimedia context or as simple text blogs, and whether they are integrated with other web based marketing activities or not. The results are an overview about the use of corporate blogs in Germany and Austria as well some time series of blogs and the numbers of comments, indicating a typical lifecycle of weblogs and numbers on the used media.