We all know that one must watch for cultural (e.g., religion, language) and commercial (e.g., no credit cards used here) differences. As well, technical factors could result in different usability or interface requirements across countries. Last week we brought you:

b – browser usage varies enormously – ignore Firefox at your peril

where we addressed this more technical issue.

Here we focus on top blogging CEOs. But how do we rank CEOs and their blogs most accurately and just? Ranking of corporate blogs may be a reflection of the size of the organization the blog represents or supports. Hence, should one control for size of the firm? As well, does a high level executive differ in how she blogs compared to the owner of a sports team?

There are numerous places where people have produced very interesting rankings about top corporate blogs. Here are two examples:

- Top 10 CEO Blogs Redux (03/07)

- Top 10 Marketing Blogs – 2007/2008

However, to assure a ranking that is not only reliable but also valid as well, let us discuss some measurement issues below. Is this an important issue you might ask? You bet it is because ever more executives around the globe are beginning to get interested if not active in the blogosphere themselves:

- who are the top blogging coaches, presidents and CEOs?

What is a corporate blog?

A corporate blog is a communication tool published by or with support of the firm. One of its main raison d’être is to support the organization’s goals (for more on this see also Corporate Blog – a Short Definition).

Nevertheless, we can group corporate blogs also according to who blogs. We provide you with a rudimentary list below.

a) CEO blog (written by president, CEO, Chairman of company using a corporate domain such as GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz blogging,

b) owner/entrepreneur (person who maybe started the firm, owns part of it or all, such as Mark Cuban, owner, Dallas Mavericks – http://www.blogmaverick.com/ or Darragh MacAnthony, Peterborough United’s chairman ,

c) c-level executive (e.g., chief marketing officer, chief human resource officer – Randy Beseler, VP, Boeing Commercial Airplanes),

d) corporate blog (several employees post more or less frequently on the corporate blog, such as Google – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/)

Naturally, an executive may also choose to blog on a domain different from one owned by the corporation. Content may still be about his or her job and profession:

e) personal blog – work-related (Rohit Bhargava ­ Vice President, Ogilvy PR , Jeremiah Owyang ­ Senior Strategist – Forrester Research), and

f) other type of corporate blog.

But if we agree that candor, urgency, timliness and maybe controversy matter, using the above categories to benchmark blogs could reveal some interesting differences (see also 2004-10-26 – Beware the CEO blog by Seth Godi). For instance, according to which category an author belongs to might reveal more or less candor in his or her writings. In fact, some people suggest that entrepreneurs write more from their gut than a hired CEO ever will.

Separate the best from the rest and categorizing blogs as outlined above will make sure that we compare things that one can compare.

Differentiating corporate blogs according to size of firm

Besides differentiating corporate blogs according to the categories we used above (type of corporate author for lack of a better term), the corporation’s actual size (e.g., number of employees) may also matter. To illustrate, the type of key performance indicators (KPIs) used may differ. As well, at what level which KPI means satisfactory performance surely differs based on the size of the organization.

Put differently, metrics used to benchmark blogs from micro, small or medium-sized firms (how the European Commission – defines the term SME) will surely differ from those used for blogs such as the one by GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz.

Beth Ziesenis and Avenue Z’s corporate blog or Kami Huyse and Communication Overtones require different KPIs to benchmark their blog compared to those we use for a large corporation. What is your opinion?

As well, could it be that a small corporation runs a far more successful blog than a multinational one if we adjust for size and such matters?

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Also of interest:

- why women buy black high heels – the girl’s guide

- the mission of ComMetrics

- 1 sensible metrics – how to measure success of a blog – the basics

- 2 sensible metrics – a framework for measuring blog success

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CyTRAP Labs’s take on this issue

Why not leave a comment below and tell us what you think – inquiring minds want to know!

How can we categorize corporate blogs best to make our benchmarking exercise more insightful than just using Technorati rankings? In addition, using Alexa.com data to rank and benchmark blogs may not make result more valid but give us rankings that are even more biased and meaningless.

What other factors may we have to control for to make sure that we compare apples with apples and not apples with oranges?

As a fellow blogger you are an expert, we appreciate any help you can give us. Please drop us a line.

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