CHICAGO and CINCINNATI (September 8, 2005) - A newly published white paper on blogs from Edelman, the world's largest public relations firm, and Intelliseek, provider of one of the Internet's leading blog portals, Talking From The Inside Out: The Rise of Employee Bloggers , examines the relationship between employees who blog and their employers by looking at the challenges and opportunities this phenomenon presents for companies and brands.

Among the study's key insights:

• Nearly 70 percent of companies have no policies or guidelines in place for employee bloggers, which is a clear liability for both companies and bloggers themselves.
• A recent Intelliseek study reveals that up to 9 percent of people posted to blogs (others or their own) to comment on or defend their employer.
• Over a recent six-month period, blog postings with the phrase or derivative of "love my job" outnumbered those with "hate work" by about 2-to-1 and outnumbered those with "hate my boss" by about 4-to-1.
• Employee blogs have helped enhance the reputation of employers in many instances (as in the cases of Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Stonyfield Farms) but have also hurt reputations in the case of several high-profile firings (as in the cases of Google, Delta Air Lines, Waterstone's and Friendster).

The paper is available for free download at both the Intelliseek and Edelman web sites. 

"We have clear evidence that consumers and other important stakeholders make decisions about products and brands based largely on what a company's employees say about them," said Christopher Hannegan Senior Vice President and Director of Edelman's Employee Engagement Practice. "And now blogs provide these same employees with access to a mass audience as never before. So companies need to understand that two powerful forces are beginning to converge in way that will have a direct and growing impact on their business."

The study examines the various approaches companies are taking toward employee blogs, including as an internal knowledge management tool.  For instance, Google uses its own blogging product, Blogger.com   to create and manage several hundred internal blogs. Many are used for project collaboration, while others are used for social interaction at work. Apple Computer has published strict employee blogger guidelines that forbid comment on anything related to Apple.

Talking From The Inside Out also includes an analysis of several CEO blogs, examples of actual employee blogging guidelines and a "Get Smart" vocabulary guide for all things related to blogging and new media.

"Employees can be critical builders of brand equity or chronic destroyers of it, and blogs speed up that process rapidly," said Pete Blackshaw, Intelliseek's CMO and 2004 co-founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. "Corporate communications professionals and senior executives need to come to grips with this new reality and learn to operate in this fast-changing blog environment."

Talking From The Inside Out is the second in a series of white papers on new communications and word-of-mouth marketing. The companies will hold a joint Sept. 21 webinar on the topic. The first Edelman and Intelliseek white paper, Trust MEdia, underscored the importance of the blogging phenomenon for public relations and communications professionals and provided a first-of-its-kind client directory of influential bloggers, segmented by industry.

For information about the white paper or word-of-mouth marketing, contact Edelman at 312-240-2822 or Intelliseek at 513-618-6700.

Intelliseek Media Contact: 513-618-6716

About Edelman
Edelman is the world's largest independent public relations firm with 1,900 employees in 43 offices worldwide. Advertising Age recently profiled Edelman as one of their "Best Agencies in 2004" and The Holmes Report named Edelman the 2004 International Agency of the Year. Edelman's network includes four specialty firms:  Blue (advertising), First&42nd (management consulting), StrategyOne (research) and BioScience Communications (medical education and publishing) -- making it possible for us to offer clients a comprehensive spectrum of communications.

About Intelliseek
Intelliseek is a marketing intelligence firm that helps marketers, brands and companies turn unstructured data into insights to promote, protect and enhance brands and products. Intelliseek specializes in "consumer-generated media," the wealth of consumer opinion expressed in Internet forums, boards, and blogs, and in direct company feedback and solicited data. Intelliseek's BrandPulse solutions help speed and deepen consumer understanding, new product launches, marketing measurement and effectiveness, corporate reputation, and product quality/issue monitoring. Its BlogPulse portal tracks and analyzes millions of blogs for key insights and trends. Intelliseek is based in Cincinnati, and its Applied Research Center is based in Pittsburgh.

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