The common attitude of Italian companies is that nobody reads online media, and therefore the investments and efforts devoted to creating and growing the online presence are negligible. Part of the problem is due to PR agencies, which are usually not able to communicate to online media.

Instead of investing in the improvement of their understanding of online media, these agencies try to convince their clients - and unfortunately often succed - that online media are useless.

Because of this situation, blogs are still far away from the corporate world. Apart from a couple of online media CEOs, like Mario Lupi of AdMaiora (online advertising), there aren't other company executives blogging.

Online branding efforts are limited to the company's web site, which is usually either very static or very "flashed" (including music), but always quite poor in contents. Comprehensive branding efforts, which leverage the contents of the company web site in order to spread the presence across the Internet are still largely unknown.

Italy is still a country where the visibility of a company can increase over 500% in one year only by changing PR agency, or by appointing the right PR manager. The same applies, with the opposite sign, by choosing the wrong PR agency or PR manager.

Therefore, when the problem is still the development of a decent press release or an appropriate pitch, the use of blogs for branding or corporate purposes is still quite far away. This doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't PR agencies or PR professionals able to master the tools of the trade.

Foreign companies trying to improve their reputation or brand awareness in Italy should look for the appropriate partner to place their efforts in the right direction.

The IULM University in Milan has recently carried out a research on the Italian blogosphere, with 600 online interviews. Italian bloggers are mainly young: 40% are students, 20% employees and 15% self-employed. Half of them are "mature" bloggers active for more than 6 months, while 9% are newbies who have just started blogging.

Italian bloggers are frequently online to search for information. The majority of those interviewed updates the blog at least three times per week, and 21% declares of writing on a daily basis. In addition, 65% of bloggers reads the blogs listed on his sidebar, 31% those of his friends, and 55% those of his readers.

The main blogging platforms are the following ones (april 2005):

Splinder: 114.695 blogs
Excite Blog: 15.078 blogs
Bloggers.it: 10.853 blogs
Tim i.blog (moblog): 8.703 blogs
il Cannocchiale: 8.286 blogs
Aruba: 4.820 blogs
iobloggo.com: 4.630 blogs

The following platforms do not release their figures: Digiland Blog, Clarence/superEva, DiaBLOGando, Blogs.it (Radio Userland), Tiscali Blog, Virgilio Blog and Leonardo. It is also difficult to estimate how many blogs in Italian are based on international platforms like Blogger or TypePad.

The Italian blogosphere grows at a 5% monthly rate, which is dramatically low in comparison with other countries, but - on the contrary - is rather high if you consider that Italy is one of the European countries where Internet penetration amongst individuals is lower.

Are Spanish companies listen to the conversation that is taking place in the blogosphere?  I must say yes.

Are they doing it professionally and on a daily basis like with press clippings and using this knowledge in one significant way for the brand?  I have to say no.

Individual employees know the importance of "listen to what the internet is saying", but it is hard for them to make the whole company asume that what is going on in the internet is crucial to the brand.

The reaction of many people -even PR practitioners- with blogs is: "Just another bubble that will  burst".

But there are people from major Spanish companies that are trying to learn more about blogs and are doing their best to figure out how can they use them for different purposes. 

Big companies -both national and multinational- like Telefónica, Vodafone, Paradores de España, Siemens, Repsolypf or Sanitas count with these employees... but some of the companies don't even know it.

Again, I believe it is a matter of time. 

Don't want to be unfair with all, but the majority of the Spanish marketing managers are more concerned about GRPs and massive advertising campaigns, than with the reputation of the company in the internet.

I think they are going to see it more clearly when a huge crisis burst and it will be too late then.

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Octavio Rojas will launch his book "Public Relations: The effectiveness of the influence" in Spain. There is a microsite available of the book (in Spanish).  http://octaviorojas.com/librorrppini.html

He is looking for an editor to publish it in English and/or French.  Volunteers? ;)

He has a personal Web site: http://www.octaviorojas.com and a blog: http://octaviorojas.blogspot.com in which he offers articles and news about communication, media and PR on a daily basis.

He is member of the Media Bloggers Association and of Bitacoras.org, the most influential blogging organizations in the USA and in the Spanish speaking countries.