Calling all Canadian Corporate Bloggers

Dave Forde - who blogs at Profectio (Latin for the source) and Da Forde - checked in with Elastic Path today about a a research survey he is brewing up about Canadian Corporate bloggers. Since Get Elastic falls into the corporate blogger category, I took the 5 minutes to fill out the survey and, since surveys are better with more folks, I encourage you to do the same. Also be sure to chime in your offering on this (in progress) list of Canadian bloggers.

Here’s his post to fill you in and get you to the survey.

Corporate Blogging Survey - Does it have an impact on your business?

I have been putting together a list of the different Canadian Corporate Blogs - There have been a few more that others have pointed me to and I’ll be publishing the complete list shortly. In the interim I’d like to get your help. Blogging has had a big impact on many businesses but it is still new and fare to say that we’re all still learning how it can have an effect on our business today and tomorrow.

Please take a few minutes to complete this survey that has been created to help better understand how blogging impacts your business and other business across Canada - http://s-lo2kz-3265.sgizmo.com

I’ll share the results in a few weeks and publish them to the site for us all to learn from. The results will also be shared at the upcoming Social Media Breakfast Seminar which will be held on January 31st here in Toronto.

PS – if you know of any other Canadian companies who are blogging feel free to forward this to them, the more data we have the better understanding we can all have.

The conversations about why more companies are not blogging are also interesting. Maple Leaf 2.0 posts about the lack of high-profile companies who have not hopped aboard the blog-wagon yet and gives some possible reasons why not (e.g. cautious conservatism or failing to understand the benefits).

Who’s Blogging in Canada?

Dave Forde has created a list of the Canadian companies that are blogging. Sadly, it’s not that long - not because Dave hasn’t done his homework properly but because not that many companies north of the border have embraced blogging.

You could chalk it up to Canada’s mysterious Web conservatism - a baffling phenomena where our enthusiasm for high-speed Internet access is way ahead of our adoption of e-commerce, online advertising and social networking. In theory, you would think that consumer-facing companies such as Tim Horton’s, Canadian Tire, Mountain Equipment Co-op and Future Shop would have their own blogs but as far as I can tell none of them are doing it.

Why is that? Does it have to do with competitive issues? Are they still trying to get their heads around how to deal with e-commerce, let alone blogging? Or do they simply see little value in blogging?

While researching the forthcoming Blogging for Retailers White Paper, I noticed not only the lack of blogs by Canadian companies but also, the lack of retailer blogs as well. Of course, the batch of Web “2.0″ companies in Canada (especially here in Vancouver) are blogging up storms in both industry-facing and community-wide blogs but not-so-much for non-techie companies like multi-channel retailers.

There are plenty of blogs about retailing (and , of course, bazillions about “new” marketing) but few retailers who are *really* blogging (without fictional characters or regurgitated PR) about the stuff their customers are passionate about. Perhaps they don’t know ‘why’ or ‘how.’ In that case, stay tuned for the White Paper BTW.

I am curious to see the results of Dave’s survey and maybe he can come present the findings on the Wet Coast sometime, … maybe even for Northern Voice 2007.