Management Toolkit

Keeping your ear to the blogosphere

Daniel Terdiman CNET News.com

Published: 04 Jan 2006 15:15 GMT

...brand is being talked about online.

Among them are Technorati, Google Blog Search and Icerocket, Rubel said.

"Those are very good if you have a manageable volume," he said. "If you have anywhere from single digits to 50 to 100 posts per day [about your company], you can probably manage that. With a huge brand, you need some tools to help you manage that. Otherwise, it just becomes too time-consuming."

Rubel pointed to public relations nightmares like that precipitated by Buzz Machine blogger Jeff Jarvis' much-publicised rants about his bad experiences with Dell and its customer service operation.

"When consumers have their own pen, they may not call in anymore," said Rubel. "They may choose to blog about it, because they think they'll get quicker service. Everyone has seen through different examples that they have to grapple with this."

To that end, Rubel said he recommends that clients keep what he calls a "lockbox" blog. He described it as "a blog you keep behind glass. In case of fire, break glass and blog."

The idea, he said, is that companies need to be able to quickly respond to crises and to do so in a medium that bloggers respect.

Ultimately, the point of tracking what online consumers are saying about brands is to be able to react quickly if something bad happens or learn from the good things people say. Either way, though, companies are learning they have to pay attention.

"The whole point," MacDonald said, "is if a company's not listening, they're not going to pick it up."