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.