Corporate Blogging in Norway : An empirical investigation into the use of Corporate Blogs in Norwegian Organizations

Abstract

This master thesis focuses on the use of corporate blogs in Norwegian organizations. A review of existing literature and research in the field of blogging and corporate blogging has been done, and the advantages/disadvantages of corporate blogging and blog reading are described. A web survey has been conducted to investigate if Norwegian organizations are blogging and their views on corporate blogging and blog reading. In addition to this, three case studies from Norwegian organizations that have adopted the blog as a tool is presented to give a more profound insight on how Norwegian organizations are utilizing blogs. The problem statement for this thesis was:

What is the state of corporate blogging in Norway?

With the following underlying research questions:

Are Norwegian organizations blogging? Why do they blog? How do they do it? What are their experiences? How do corporate blogging in Norway compare to corporate blogging abroad?

The results from this thesis show that Norwegian organizations have adopted the blog as a tool, but in small numbers so far. Both external and internal blogging has been seen in this research. The early adopters are seeing a variety of benefits from their blogging initiatives and the majority state that their blogs are considered as successful and that they will continue to blog in the future. We have also seen that the number of Norwegian organizations that read blogs and monitor the blogosphere is greater than the number of Norwegian organizations blogging themselves, and have seen indications that there is an increased interest in corporate blogging amongst Norwegian organizations.