Blog Content and Audience Engagement for B2B Brand Image

The aim of the study is to investigate how B2B blogs features influence brand image. Specifically, the questions we address are how major B2B firms use blog content and engagement features and their influence on brand image. We also address cultural differences between North America and France.
This study, focusing on specificities of blogs, brings details on how corporate blog features can influence B2B brand image. Specifically, the study shows that B2B blogs disseminate much more information than just company expertise and also allow stakeholders to shape the brand image to varying extent. Data from 54 North American and French industry leaders, were sampled for four multiple correspondence analyses and a Proxscal analysis, providing a classification with three clusters of B2B blogs.
Results show that these clusters differ in the way they approach and foster brand image through their blog content and engagement: some are more product-oriented, while others focus on the company and customer relationship. The analysis of these three clusters also enables to differentiate corporate behaviors in terms of the blog content orientation and the engagement with audience through the blogs. Overall, the findings show that corporate blogs are a powerful tool for B2B brand image, used mainly to demonstrate expertise in a specific industry. Moreover, several means are used to do so, such as the type of content and interactions with the audience. Additionally, results show cultural differences in the treatment of blogs and their features, thus impacting B2B brand image.