I was asked recently by a market research journalist, why blog tracking is relevant for business. Blogs are now on most companies’ radars, but often the discussion is on how they can use blogs as a dissemination tool, not on how they can be used to gain customer insights. There is no question that the numbers are increasing (30 million and doubling every year) For Attentio, this is our business and blogs are only one example of people generated content (UseNet and consumer review sites are very important too), but here is why we think blogs are specifically interesting.
1. Search engine relevance: If you search about an issue, a product, or company it is likely a blog will figure highly in the results i.e. in page 1 or 2. This means the content of a blog will have a large audience of search users. My mother reads about a Gucci handbag in a blog, a patient reads about a new drug in a blog, a person looking to buy a new computer reads about Dell customer service issue in Jeff Jarvis’s blog etc.
2. Connectedness: Bloggers link to other bloggers. Tools like track-back add to this connectedness and often it is possible to follow where an issue was first discussed and how it spread through this network.
3. Content and set up: Blogs are easy to set up and have no editor. There is nothing to stop anyone creating a blog and writing about widely discussed issue or niche topics that interest them. In a sense they can take advantage of the “Long tail” with micro-communities of interested people or post about more mainstream topics.
4. Predictability: If an increasing number of bloggers are talking about a specific product and the sentiment is positive, this can translate into more sales or at least more enquiries. This is product and influence dependent, but there are plenty of case examples. The corollary of negative sentiment also applies.
Attentio can help give perspective on what the buzz around blogs means; to do this we use technology, methodology and standard reporting. A good way to start seeing if this is relevant for your company is by checking Technorati or Google blog search and see how frequently people post on a specific area of interest. Then check out Google Groups and do the same for discussion forums. If the numbers are large, then it might be worth paying professionals to do the analytics work…
For more information on this topic there is a great article from Business Week on the impact of blogs, also a post on this blog from November has a good number of sites to go to.
March 28th, 2006 at 10:14 pm
frankly I am shocked that the journalist did not talk about gathering information from customers. The journalist only mentioned marketing promotional tactics from blogging. I think there are marketing research benefits. Did you ask them about that issue?
March 29th, 2006 at 9:02 am
Hi John, when I spoke with the journalist, his genuine interest was why a company would want to track what is written in the Blogosphere. He had a lot of experience with new market research methodologies and wanted to see why this technique is valuable.
The real crux of that conversation was explaining how blogs are influential in search engines and are powerful because of no editorial intervention.
I am in this “blog tracking” industry so understand the potential, but a fairly traditional industry like market research needs persuasion.
Regards,
Simon
April 12th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
As an ex-market researcher, I’m a convert to the need of companies to understand how consumers (actual and potential) are feeling and to follow ‘blogged’ comments. Sentiment about products/services/companies is clearly important for businesses to follow. However, the sheer volume makes this difficult without help. Personally, from the blogs I read, I find I’m more affected by negative sentiment rather than positive - and would be more likely to be put off something, rather than be positively influenced - but that could just be me!
I follow a news feed on the football club I support and am amazed at the sheer number of blogs that appear on the site - while some may be of little interest to the club, there are some that comment on issues that the club would do well to listen to.
I just wish that bloggers would work on the presentation of their sites - too many are just streams of text - they would do well to heed the advice given in Steve Rubel’s site - Micro Persuasion, where there are tips to help them make their sites more impactful!
April 12th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Hi Richard, I agree that the negative feedback can leave a stronger impression, in recent times I would say that case studies of blogger power have also focussed on poor customer service (e.g. Dell story instigated by Jeff Jarvis) or product weakness (Kryptonite bike locks). As you can imagine we track a lot of products and industries and there are a significant number of stories where companies benefit from positive blogger buzz…
On presentation, the jury is out here. The tools are getting sharper and some bloggers are very sophisticated. From my perspective I am glad that people find it easy to post. If we look at the actual presentation of “myspace” or Bebo it is not always beautiful but there are millions of young people writing about what they love or hate and this is incredibly powerful…
Thanks for the feedback.
Regards,
Simon
April 14th, 2006 at 10:08 am
I think that tracking and analysing consumer generated content will become a must for any marketing department of major companies. The major advantages I see today from doing so are: getting feedback from consumers that is not influenced by a questionnaire, interviewer or the research methodology in general and it is fast & ongoing research. But many companies like to see unstructured data (like verbatim in market research) in a structured way and getting some good examples of articles to illustrate. How does Attentio deal with that? And is “blogging” a consumer thing or it is also applicable in a B2B context?
April 14th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Hi Colin,
I agree that getting feedback from people who are unpaid and unprompted to write in blogs can be very powerful. The tools we provide do enable our clients to go to the source of the feedback (e.g. the article or the blog) but we also find the aggregate trends offer value and highlight if campaigns have been successful.
As to your second point, the number of blogs is increasing dramatically and it touches more than consumers. Indeed there are many CEOs blogging in the US and more businesses realise that blogs can help them communicate with their clients. If you read the book “Naked conversations” it demonstrates how blogging is enabling this more open approach between companies and their customers. I think blogs are only the start and more forums will become available for people to write their views and share resources like music, advice, video, recipes, chat etc. 18 months ago who would have thought myspace would have been the phenomenon it now is…
Simon
April 18th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
It makes sense to me that explaining the benefits of blogging beyond market research benefits to the market research journalist would have to be done. I just a little surprised about the lack of connection to the market research benefits. Though I suppose it is a little bit of a shift to move from sample results to observational results.
Really search rankings are ancillary to other marketing goals within the context of blogger relations. To get a high ranking on search engines for a topic you don’t write content that relates to getting a high ranking, you write content that’s relevant to the audience and encourages linking because of the value of the content.
I also think Richard is right that negative comments can leave a stronger impression than positive comments. That’s one strong argument for corporate blogging. Don’t let a negative comment go without a response from your company, either on the blog that made your comment or on your own blog. By responding you demonstrate you are prepared to discuss any concerns or issues. You don’t have to agree with the negative commenter but by responding you dispel the perception that the negative comments are right because you did not make a comment. The more you comment and establish yourself as part of the community you gain friends and supporters who will critique negative comments even when you are not around.
I’d also like to hear more about your product, maybe even see a demo.