The work of Emanuel Rosen focusses on the top 10 industries buzz has impact on. Buzz is online word-of-mouth embodied by the connectedness of blogs, UseNet and other forums. It is interesting to see this recent article in B2B where Masterchem a manufacturer of paint primer tracks blogs. This is not an industry perhaps associated with generating many online customer conversations but they tracked 1000 postings on their brand alone. As more people use blogs and other forums it will mean that the importance of tracking will increase for more industries.
For the record, Masterchem use the blog tracking as a replacement for focus groups which they feel do not give the full picture, meaning that the unstructured nature of online conversations give a more representative feel. Of course focus groups and structured questioning methodologies have a huge role in consumer insight, but increasingly the best place to get a quick read of the “online” brand will be from listening to the pulse of the Internet…