It is quite interesting to figure out what type of information gets through to people who are thinking about buying especially when it's businesses, that will spend a fair amount of money.
In an article at 'Chief Marketer' called Reasons to Get Evangelical About Evangelism Marketing (link via Mediapost's Marketing Daily), there may be some light shed on this. The article discusses a study from MarketingSherpa partnering with CNET.
Over and above the main results that explain how Word of Mouth, Conferences and Print Magazines came in respectively first second and third (48.3%, 41.9% and print magazines at 40.6%), the article discusses how blogs from 'other technology professionals' came in higher than all other blogs at 19.6%. The stats also have podcasts coming in at 2.7% of answers.
I think that sounds right to me, blogs from companies are not really high for me on a reliability scale, or blogs from traditional magazines and media companies. What I would call independent blogs from professionals are more than likely to get my attention. Why ? Well I consider that all the others have something to gain from evangelising a product or company in the same way that the well known evangelists like Vincent Cerf and Guy Kawasaki do/did don't score high. Even if they start pleading and saying honest this product is really great, it's just too much like selling your soul for my liking.