Messaging Pipeline | Weblog Tracking And Promotion
Free Newsletter GlossaryContact UsAbout Us
One To One Collaboration Servers & Security Business

February 06, 2006

Catch The Blog Buzz



Courtesy of

Page 1 of 2


Catching a buzz is a whole lot easier than it used to be.

For marketers, public-relations firms, and companies looking to promote a brand, blogs have become a valuable resource for understanding what consumers want or like--and, even more important, what they hate.

Because these online exchanges come unprompted and unfiltered, they're a rich sounding board for corporate spinmeisters looking to gauge reactions to a new advertising campaign or hear customers describe their lifestyles. Sometimes it's just as valuable to learn what bloggers think about the competition. A few companies weigh in with their own responses--or even paid bloggers--though that terrain is riddled with pitfalls in a blogosphere that's ruthless when wronged.

To monitor the vast landscape of opinions recorded online--which in addition to blogs includes message boards, user groups, and Web sites--Factiva, Umbria, and others rely on natural language processing and text-mining applications to parse the Internet for mentions of brands, people, or companies. Umbria determines the demographic group of individuals based on language patterns. Intelliseek, which tracks more than 20 million blogs and discussion groups for such clients as Ford, Microsoft, Nokia, Procter & Gamble, and Toyota, describes it as bringing measurability to word of mouth.

A brave few companies take the extra step of setting up their own blogs or paying individuals, not necessarily employees, to act as advocates on their behalf. The Pennsylvania Tourism Office last summer recruited six people to travel around the state on weekend trips and picked up the tab, up to $1,000 per excursion. In return, the travelers were expected to blog about their experiences and upload their photos and videos.

"There's nothing more valid than a third-party validation, and that's what bloggers do," says David Heidenreich, VP of strategy and online planning for Ripple Effects Interactive, the Web advertising company that conducted the campaign. Ripple Effects created an online relations department in August to monitor blogs on behalf of a half-dozen clients in the tourism and higher education sectors.

From a publicity perspective, the tourism project worked. Ripple Effects did a little promotion within the PR industry, and word of mouth spread, culminating in mentions by CNN and The Associated Press. "That buzz started at the underground level, and Reuters picked it up, and it went national," Heidenreich says. "We reached out to 25 blogs, and all of a sudden we're getting mentioned on 250 blogs."

Mixed Response
Not all the reaction was positive. Some people questioned the authenticity of the bloggers. Ripple Effects encouraged the blogging travelers to respond online, which a few did, defending their impartiality.

But it was a big enough success that a new campaign is planned for the spring that will combine social networking with travel planning. Visitors to the Pennsylvania Tourism Office site will be able to post personal profiles, create their own road trips, and share their itineraries online; comments from viewers will be welcomed.



(click image for larger view)

Travel and blog: Pennsylvania's Tourism Office will pay you to do it.
"What's going to sell the tourism product more: a paragraph of marketing fluff my copywriter develops, or Joe from Pittsburgh talking about his whitewater rafting experience--and here's a video of him falling out of the raft?" Heidenreich asks.

To those who object to the intrusion into the anti-establishment blogosphere, Heidenreich makes an analogy to another pop-culture phenomenon. "It's like when your favorite band gets popular. The hard-core bloggers are irritated when corporate America gets into the mix," he says. "But there's no lying going on, there's nothing contrived."

The tourism board is more an exception than the rule. Few companies are willing to pay for endorsements by bloggers, but some banks, consultant groups, packaged-goods companies, and pharmaceutical firms spend as much as $200,000 to $300,000 annually for online media monitoring by Factiva, a joint venture between Dow Jones and the Reuters Group.

Factiva Insight: Reputation Intelligence, launched in August, mines content from 9,000 news sources, including the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and 15,000 Web sites. Through a partnership with Intelliseek, it also keeps an eye on 4 million blogs.

Umbria offers similar services for $6,000 per month to about 40 clients, including Electronic Arts and SAP, in the apparel, automotive, entertainment, consumer electronics, consumer packaged goods, and video-game industries. IBM sells software and services, alongside Factiva, for companies to track input from sources such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and to review sites to track the success of product launches, for example.

"Marketing and communication is going through a big change," says Alan Scott, chief marketing officer for Factiva. But not everyone is catching on. "We're having to educate many people in corporate America about how to use blogs," he says.

Scott often recommends that companies use blogs in place of customer focus groups, a traditional method for gathering feedback from customers. Since bloggers give their honest reactions rather than answering what are sometimes leading questions, they can be a valuable resource, not to mention less expensive and more accessible, Scott says.

"Blogs or message boards can be the canary in the coal mine" for a company's image problems, says Howard Kaushansky, Umbria's president and CEO. The invasive software rootkit that was found on some of Sony BMG's CDs was first revealed on a blog, and the blogging community savaged the company for it, turning the incident into a public-relations disaster for Sony in November.

E-mail This Story
Print This Story



Page 2: next page


Page 1 | 2



Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.


Related Content

  Right-click and choose Copy to extract RSS Feed URL  Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed
  Right-click and choose Copy to extract RSS Feed URL  Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed




Editorial and vendor perspectives






Editor's Picks
The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista
Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you?

Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance

Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam

Wikis In The Workplace

Review: Google Desktop 3

Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain?
Video is a great idea
    13%
Video is fine but there needs to be size limits
    25%
It's never used for anything really productive
    38%
I draw the line at live TV
    25%


In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.



MESSAGING PIPELINE MARKETPLACE (sponsored links)

Digital Warehouse buys, sells, & rents used Cisco networking hardware such as routers & switches, as well as Juniper, Extreme & Foundry at 50-80% off list price. One year warrantee and fast delivery.


Stop spam on your terms with CanIt-PRO, the most flexible and customizable anti-spam solution available for the mail server. Offers per-user or per-group controls and is available as software or hardware appliance.


Use your Intranet to manage Software Licenses, plan for Windows XP/2000 upgrades, do Security Audits and more. Click to try and ask for our white paper - PC Management for the Internet Age.


Analysts at the Tolly Group put a leading Branch Office IT services solution to the test, measuring performance, security and data reliability. Download the results, detailed in this free report, now.


Whether you need temporary or permanent access to remote PCs, LogMeIn has your solution: LogMeIn IT Reach for automatic maintenance of remote and mobile systems, and LogMeIn Rescue for instant, web-based remote access without pre-installing software.






Sponsored Links:      
 |   |   |   |   |   | 
 |   |   |   | 
 |   |   |   |   | 
Messaging Pipeline  |   |   |   | 
 |   |   |   |   | 
© 2006 | MESSAGING PIPELINE All rights reserved. | |