Only 16 per cent of consumers trust what they read on corporate blogs, according to new research from Forrester research.
The trust level of blogs is below other forms of communications including direct mail and message board posts.
User-created wikis like Wikipedia were trusted by 33 per cent, message board posts by 21 per cent, online classifieds by 20 per cent, personal blogs by 18 per cent, followed by company social network profiles and blogs.
Profiles of brands on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace were trusted by just 18 per cent of consumers, according to the research.
Social media is now a mainstream phenomenon with Facebook is adding more than 100,000 users a day and already has 2.7 million active users, with more than half of those returning daily. MySpace is considerably larger, with 6.8 million users in the UK alone.
The research firm suggests companies focus on customer problems and cater to brand fans in order to experience success across social media.
The Forrester research also reveals that many brands make the mistake of blogging about what they know most about: themselves.
According to Datamonitor, in just three years time 70 per cent of online content will be user-generated. Technorati now monitors over 81 million blogs and it is estimated that there are 171 million blogs worldwide.
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