Blogging ROI

Charlene Li of Forrester has released the latest report on the ROI of Blogging. Her post is an interesting read and I'm not going to recap it entirely here. You should read it for yourself. Also, check out the excerpt itself if you're interested in buying the research.

Tools like this should help in the effort to get more executives involved in social media. Even though the report focuses on blogging, my guess is that you could apply the same model technique to other open communications tactics like podcasting, wikis, forums, video blogging and perhaps even Second Life.

But I wonder about the case study chosen to accompany the report: GM's Fast Lane.

While it's a great blog and a great example of how to use blogs effectively to reach out to customers, it's also one that has been examined extensively. Also, GM is unique in that it was one of the first, and largest, companies to start blogging. Something that directly contributed to the high level of associated press coverage, which, of course, is a factor in ROI.

I haven't read the case study, so this isn't a critique on the work done or what is says, but more just of the choice.

I would be very interested to see a few different social media examples from smaller and more diverse companies. It's one thing to reach out to a broad consumer audience, it's something else to reach a smaller niche audience effectively. It's also interesting to see how a blog became an effective PR tool in a crowded market like, say, a Web 2.0 company that is trying to break through. Or maybe how a food products group used a social media to build a distribution community.