Previous years, as a PR professional, I simply had to track coverage in a handful of major magazines and trade journals to gauge a technology company’s reputation among its prospects and customers, as well as key industry advisors such as analysts. But today, as the importance of social media continues to rapidly rise, understanding what the public thinks, wants, and needs requires a more complex and sophisticated monitoring strategy. A strategy that involves comprehensive blog monitoring and response.
Blogs are a Media Force
Blogs, also known as Weblogs, represent a new, revolutionary form of journalism. These online communication vehicles provide an information-hungry consumer audience with a steady stream of timely and relevant news and resources about the topics they are most interested in.
As the popularity and number of print publications declines (there were over 31,000 magazines available in 1999, but less than 23,000 published in 2005, based on a study by the American Society of Magazine Editors), the number of blogs seems to be growing at an unstoppable pace.
As of June, 2007, Technorati was tracking more than 85.2 million blogs, and claims that another 175,000 new blogs are added each day.
Blogs Help Shape Public Opinion
When targeted and monitored effectively, these blogs – as well as message boards, wikis, and product review sites – can offer a wealth of accurate and timely intelligence about consumer opinions, behaviors, and preferences.
By tracking these social media channels, PR agencies can gain the valuable insight they need to create more relevant and impactful messages, and develop more successful high-tech public relations, branding, and marketing plans. Additionally, because opinions, comments, and ideas that are both positive and negative can spread like wildfire in the expansive blogosphere, this information can help firms implement high-tech PR strategies that enable them to effectively leverage online media to control their clients’ reputations and images.
Blog Monitoring Objectives
The objective of blog monitoring is two-fold.
The first major goal is to find the Weblogs that cover topics and issues related to a client’s products and services, and determine what the link density of each one is. Those blogs with the highest link density are usually the ones with the widest-reaching Web networks, the greatest “mindshare” among the Internet audience, and the most influence over consumer opinion. Once the most important blogs have been identified, the PR agency can then begin building relationships with the bloggers, to help ensure that their clients’ messages, images, and value propositions are accurately and consistently relayed in any blog entries.
The second purpose of blog monitoring is to track references specific to the client. For example, blog monitoring can enable PR professionals to find and evaluate mentions of the company, product and brand names, or the names of top executives. This will help them continuously assess the company’s reputation, and the market’s perception of their products and services, so they instantly uncover any problems, and take appropriate action when needed.
How to Monitor the Blogosphere
Many PR agencies outsource blog monitoring activities, much in the same way they use third-party service providers to track clippings and print coverage.
For those firms that choose to handle their own blog monitoring, there are plenty of tools available. Any RSS reader can be used to subscribe to up-to-the-minute news and Web content based on common industry key words and phrases (these can be the same key words and phrases used in press monitoring). There are also a variety of quantitative blog monitoring solutions, such as Feedster, PubSub, and Technorati that provide key statistics such as the number of blogs and the frequency of posts or updates. Or, qualitative tools like Blogdex, BlogPulse, Daypop, and Blabble can help PR agencies track the context of blog entries and other online discussions.
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