Guest post by Joe Zuccaro, The Marketing Consigliere.

I just read The Center for Media Research’s latest Research Brief.They are reporting on an American Pulse Survey by BIGresearch, regarding American’s trust in the establishment. The statistics staring at me in the face say that twice as many people trust Bloggers more than Congress, and most age groups trust Bloggers more than the mainstream Media. Yikes!

I wonder what the stats would have been for “Corporations.�

What Marketers need to learn from this (I admit I’m not the first to say this but I’m definitely in the chorus) is the power of Blogs and the how the “wisdom of the crowds� is disrupting the communication monopolies controlled by the political and media worlds. And since advertising is part of the media world and corporations play a major part in that, Marketers need to step up to the plate and proactively engage Bloggers in an open, amicable way.

There have already been too many faux pas committed by corporations approaching blogging as merely another PR tool; Marketers must humbly accept even the largest of corporations is a peer in the blogging world. Once the “fear of equality� is overcome, blogging will allow Marketers to engage is worthwhile, live dialogue with audiences.

With the net-centricity of blogging, these dialogues can be gathered into digital warehouses of information for use by Marketers with data mining and other BI tools. While such perceived exploitation of Blogs may create a backlash of distrust towards corporations and marketers, the promise of greater mindshare, improved products, new markets, and more revenue will fuel the evolution of blogging by Marketers.

These efforts at blogging must carefully establish trust with extensions of privacy policy and adherence to those policies.Those that earn trust will flourish; those that do not will not blog for long… or at least with any valuable audience.