About 70% of brand coverage by bloggers around the world is disconnected from the core messages being promoted by digital marketers, according to a study by PR firm Burson-Marsteller.

Distortion of Company Messages by Blogs

Distortion of Company Messages by Blogs by Region, May 2010, (c) eMarketer

Some degree of message distortion is inevitable, but experts say that companies can reduce the noise by creating powerful content of their own – if bloggers can link directly to high-quality content, the theory goes, they’re less likely to put their own spin on things.

Nearly three-quarters of blog posts don’t reflect corporate messaging

Marketers and other corporate communications professionals may sometimes feel they have a thankless task: carefully craft messages about their company’s thought leadership, social responsibility efforts and new product or service launches, only to find those messages distorted as they’re disseminated through the media.

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One thing that makes social media marketing powerful is consumers’ trust in “people like them”—their friends, family and other online peers.

(c) Facebook

(c) Facebook

Marketers want to tap into that trust through the power of earned media or by engaging in a conversation with consumers, but where social conversations take place has an effect on their perceived trustworthiness as well as who is taking part in them.

A study of frequent social media users by market research firm Invoke Solutions found that the most trusted information was posted by people respondents knew. But blog posts were more likely to be trusted “completely” than posts on Facebook, and trust dropped off sharply when it came to Twitter, even among friends.

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About a year ago, Starbucks overtook Coca-Cola as the most popular corporate brand on Facebook, with its page drawing 3.7 million fans. Now the coffee brewery has become the first brand to hit the 10 million-fan mark on Facebook.

The nearest rivals, Coke and Skittles, are both trailing behind at about 6.5 million fans.

To put Starbucks’ success in perspective, the company is quite close to catching up to pop icon

Lady Gaga in Facebook fans, who has about 10.4 million fans, according to data compiled by the Inside Facebook blog. Only other celebrities like Michael Jackson and Vin Diesel, some games (“Texas Hold’em Poker,” “Mafia Wars”), “Family Guy,” Facebook, and the President of the United States, stand ahead of Starbucks in the number of Facebook fans.

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