Janson says the jury is still out when it comes to corporate blogging

Search engine marketing is the most important marketing development of the last ten years and presents the best value for money in the marketing communications mix.

These are the findings of a global survey by Eurocom Worldwide, who asked 350 senior technology executives, predominantly within B2B organisations, about their attitudes to Internet marketing.

According to the findings, the overwhelming majority (79 per cent) acknowledge the importance of search engines and their impact on corporate communications and marketing, with over half (59 per cent) expecting the company they work for to increase expenditure on Internet advertising this year. Crucially, Internet marketing is rated the best value for money marketing medium, ahead of PR, trade shows and exhibitions.

"The Eurocom Worldwide survey shows that corporations and businesses around the world are going through a fundamental shift towards embracing the Internet as an engine for marketing," says Mads Christensen, network director of Eurocom Worldwide. "This applies across all sectors from business-to-consumer to business-to-business."

However despite the massive popularity of search engine marketing, corporate blogging is still failing to catch on within many B2B organisations. Around a quarter of survey respondants (28 per cent) said they owned a blog, whilst nearly half (47 per cent) don't blog at all, writing it off as invaluable or too time consuming. Less than one in five (16 per cent) said that they were considering adopting a blog within the next year.

Alexander Craig, MD of digital agency Bit 10, says it's a shame that so many brands continue to overlook the medium. "People underestimate the long term impacts of technology, and so far companies are failing to see the synergy between search marketing and blogging - blogging can be a wonderful catalyst for getting your company better rankings. It doesn't surprise me that these are senior technology executives that are failing to grasp the concept though; over the next few years we will see a steady rise in the number of execs who have grown up using My Space and Facebook and who will more naturally see blogging as an extension of their working lives," he says.

Of those who do blog, half (50 per cent) do so to improve interaction with customers, and just over one in five (21 per cent) use the medium as a means of discussing industry issues. Only one in ten (10 per cent) use blogs to boost their SEO strategies.

"The jury seems to be still out on the merits of corporate blogging as a tool," says Jennifer Janson, MD of PR agency Six Degrees, which helped Eurocom to conduct the survey. "Corporate blogging requires dedicating time and resource, as well as a commitment to transparency, which may not sit well with many traditional companies. However, its value in terms of search engine optimisation and interaction is potentially enormous."

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