The Peppercom and Bulldog Reporter Business Blogging Survey conducted on 1,200 marketing industry executives from the United States and United Kingdom, revealed some startling disconnects in corporate communication policy on both sides of the pond..

¨       Most respondents (78 percent for U.S. and U.K.) believe that the public relations department should handle fallout from bad news breaking in the blogosphere

¨       However, over 80 percent (U.S.: 87 percent, U.K.: 82 percent) of respondents confess they or their clients don’t have an official blogging policy in place

¨         Half of the respondents (49 percent) are not monitoring blogs and online conversations

 ¨      63 percent have not adapted their communications strategy to include proactive outreach to blogs, message boards, and other forms of digital and social media

Hmm,  so let’s get this straight –  they don’t know what’s going on in the blogosphere, there’s no policy in place to deal with blogs and they haven’t adapted their corporate communication strategy to include any online elements. PR is not trained in blog or social media relations, but if there is a problem PR must deal with it.

No wonder PR professionals are flocking to online PR and Web 2.0 workshops and SEO-PR training seminars.  Their butts are on the line here.

Listen to the podcast for the full analysis of the survey results.  Be patient - it takes a while to load.  But it's worth waiting for.