New Study of Japanese Bloggers Shows Most are Blogging About Companies, but Companies are Not Communicating With the Blogosphere

August 31, 2006, Tokyo -- Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm, announced today the results of a study of 213 Japanese bloggers. The survey was conducted in partnership with Technorati Japan (www.technorati.jp), the leading Japanese blog search engine. The purpose of the study was to discover how Japan’s bloggers communicate with companies and blog about their products, with a view to determining general blogger PR preferences for corporate and product communications.

Among the survey’s key findings were:

Seventy percent of respondents said that among the reasons they blog is ‘to create a record of their thoughts;’ 63.8% said that they blog ‘to create a record of the information that I have gained;’ and, 58.7% said that they blog ‘to share information I have gained with others’ (multiple reasons for blogging were accepted).

Just 4.7% of the Japanese bloggers surveyed said that the primary reason they blog is to ‘raise visibility as an authority in my field,’ whereas 33.9% stated in a similar Edelman/Technorati American-based study of English language bloggers last year that this is their primary reason for blogging -- seemingly a significant cross-cultural difference

A total of 84.5% Japanese respondents said that they blog about companies (their industry, service, products), with 49.3% doing so at least once a week (with 14.6% saying ‘daily or almost daily’).

A majority -- 55.4% -- said they are ‘never’ contacted by companies.

Seventy percent of Japanese bloggers said that they find corporate websites to be trustworthy or very trustworthy, while 62.9% indicated that they find the ‘corporate news release’ trustworthy or very trustworthy.

“What these results show is that while Japanese bloggers are communicating about companies or products all the time, companies are not communicating with them enough, even though conventional methods of corporate communications are still more trusted in Japan compared to America,” says Edelman North Asia President Robert Pickard. “This seems to argue in favor of companies supplementing their traditional one-way ‘monologue’ communication of messages by engaging with bloggers online through a new two-way ‘dialogue’ where conversations are key.”

“The important thing is targeting,” says Technorati Japan Marketing Manager Fumi Yamazaki. “Because bloggers have different attitudes depending on what company or product or product category they are talking about, we are trying to reach out to the bloggers, understand what they want and provide the means for the companies and bloggers to both be satisfied with what we provide.”

The Edelman Japan/Technorati Japan PR Study of Bloggers was designed to identify the opinions and attitudes of Japanese bloggers as they relate to communicating with companies and products. The study was conducted/hosted by Technorati Japan from April-May 2006 (respondents voluntarily clicked a link to take the online survey, which was posted at www.technorati.jp). 213 Japanese respondents completed the survey, which was exclusively in the Japanese language (166 or 78% were male and 47 or 22% were female). This study makes no claim to be of a ‘scientific’ nature. It was a voluntary poll of users online who chose to fill-out the survey and neither Edelman nor Technorati pre-selected those eligible to participate.

While the survey was aimed at bloggers, there is no guarantee that all respondents are in fact bloggers. There is also the question of inter-question validity, with no certainty that a respondent’s answer to one question is consistent with their answer to another.

About Edelman
Edelman is the world’s largest independent public relations firm, with 2,200 employees in 46 offices worldwide. The firm was named PRWeek’s Large Agency of the Year for 2006. Advertising Age named Edelman as the best PR firm in its 2005 “Best Agencies” issue, while PRWeek awarded the firm its “Editor’s Choice” distinction at the start of 2006. Edelman was also named 2006 Large Agency of the Year and 2005 International Agency of the Year by The Holmes Group.

About Edelman Japan
Founded in 1952, Edelman (www.edelman.jp) is the world’s largest independent public relations agency with annual revenues of USD 292 million (JPY 34 billion). The firm’s more than 2,200 professionals serve clients from 46 offices in 23 countries. Japan’s fastest-growing international PR consultancy, Edelman offers a full spectrum of the most state-of-the-art public relations services available today. From CSR consulting to crisis communications to understanding the rise of blogging and personal media, Edelman is working to set a new PR standard by helping world companies communicate in Japan, and helping Japanese companies communicate around the world.

About Technorati Japan
Technorati Japan is Japan’s leading authority on what’s happening in the world of audience-generated media. Currently tracking more than 4 million blogs in near real-time, Technorati Japan surfaces new blog posts within minutes of being published.

For further information contact:

 

Jennifer Poulson jennifer.poulson@edelman.com