A new survey of 200 PR and marketing industry professionals, performed by the analysts at Peppercom, offers some wisdom from the no-longer brand new world of corporate blogging.  Key findings included:

• 72% of PR and marketing professionals cite the creation of
  artificial, overly promotional corporate blogs as the principal mistake
  that companies make when attempting to blog.
• In addition, 50% cite "obvious ghostwriting" as another significant blunder that they have witnessed with corporate blogs. 
• 50% also cite companies that just "blog for blog’s sake" as a problem that they have seen.

These were respondents who were generally very supportive of corporate blogs, but apparently concerned about the way that they are often implemented.

What do these concerns indicate?   That quality content is the best way to leverage this medium, and low-quality content on a blog may do more harm to your reputation than good.    Is this reason not to blog at all?  It might be, were it not for the incredible benefits offered by quality blogging.  Also from the same survey:

• 80%
  of respondents feel that a corporate blog can help improve the dialogue
  between a company and its stakeholders, customers, and employees.
• 79% feel that a corporate blog helps position the company / chief blogger as a thought leader.

What’s the best way to fill your blog with high-value thought-leading dialogue that avoids "promotion for its own sake?"  To make sure that your public-facing blog writers have a steady stream of breaking industry news and information available so that they can be at the forefront of those conversations.  The key to this ready access to emerging information from across your industry is RSS.  Being subscribed to a number of well selected feeds is like have the most personalized news paper available dropped in your lap at the moment you need it.  Combine that with a blog and you’ve been asked to write the paper’s editorial.

No other tool better integrates blogging, RSS and other supporting technologies like tagging and SEO on an enterprise level to maximize the quality and circulation of the editorial blog posts you write than a Blogsite from RSSApplied.

Blogging is an important opportunity.  Low level, insincere engagement with the medium, however, is proving to be a bad idea.  Careful decisions need to be made about how to use this new transparency to communicate honestly and in an informed way with stakeholders.