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WSJ Story: Blogging and Marketing Insights

The front page of this morning's Wall Street Journal Marketplace edition features an article entitled "Marketers Scan Blogs for Brand Insights."  Intelliseek is featured in the story, but more importantly, the article underscores the very real potential for brands to harvest meaningful brand insights from unaided consumer conversations.  Some excerpts:

• "... a growing number of marketers are using new technology to analyze blogs and other "consumer-generated media" -- a category that includes chat groups, message boards and electronic forums -- to hear what is being said online about new products, old ad campaigns and aging brands. Purveyors of the new methodology and their clients say blog-watching can be cheaper, faster and less biased than such staples of consumer research as focus groups and surveys.
• "Marketers say bloggers' unsolicited opinions and offhand comments are a source of invaluable insights that are hard to get elsewhere. "We look at the blogosphere as a focus group with 15 million people going on 24/7 that you can tap into without going behind a one-way mirror," says Rick Murray, executive vice president of Edelman, a Chicago public-relations firm.

Employees and Blogs

The topic of "blogs and employees" is receiving considerable attention right now.  Yesterday, USA Today featured an excellent (and quite in-depth) story on this topic, and last night I was interviewed live by anchor Erica Hill of CNN Headline News.   As we've discussed in so many of our Intelliseek webinars, especially last week's on this topic on employees and blogs, companies need to think proactively about employee blogging politicies.   This is already beginning to happen with many companies such as IBM, Yahoo, and GM.  The key is to strike the right balance between employee empowerment and loyalty and the need to keep proprietary, confidential, or compromising information from spreading via blogs authored by company employees.  The reality is that just about every blog author out there makes some reference, often peripheral or tandential, about his or her work experiences.  Most is innocuous and benign, posing no risk to the company.  In fact, as I explained to CNN, if you pay close attention to BlogPulse trend charts, you'll find that more people talk about positive work experiences than negative work experiences on blogs.  Net, many companies (like Microsoft) are benefiting from employee evangelism and advocacy as expressed on blogs. 

Thursday Report - Intelliseek in Wall Street Journal

This morning, the Wall Street Journal's Carl Bialik - aka "The Numbers Guy" - wrote a superb piece entitled "Measuring the Impact of Blogs Requires More than Counting."    Intelliseek's BlogPulse engineer Natalie Glance is quoted extensively. Meanwhile, our Tuesday webinar was a huge success with over 80 sign-ups. Big thanks to Sue MacDonald, author of BlogPulse Highlights, for partnering with me on this one.   Next up: Blogs and Employees on June 9th.

More on De-Hyping the Blogophere

Hmm...not sure if this is compliment to my forecasting ability or not, but the discussion here from Steve Rubel's site today is a good one. 

• Pete Blackshaw predicted this would happen and he was right. A blog bashing movement is underway. In a new report, eMarketer is questioning whether businesses will ever blog. They're following the effervescent Nick Denton. He got the ball rolling with his "Up with People-like" quotes in Sunday's New York Times.

I attempted to offer some clarity on my position in a follow-up post to Steve's blog.  See comment at bottom of the permalink.

Blog Media Coverage - The March Continues

This morning, my Jupiter/ClickZ column, entitled "Irrational Blogguberance", attempts to take a step back and ask some harder, more self-critical questions about the blogging space.  As marketers, we need to do this constantly.  I write this against a backdrop of almost unstoppable media attention about blogs.  Two weeks, ago Business Week featured a cover story on the topic.  Even this morning, the WSJ featured a piece entitled "Corporate Marketers Try Out Blogs."  Today, Steve Rubel's blog this morning highlights an innovative new program with Vespa Scooters.  Meanwhile, Sue MacDonald, editor of BlogPulse Highlights, focuses recent attention on blogger reaction to First Lady Laura Bush's recent foray into edgy humor. 

Add Water and Blog?

My most recent blog-related article in Jupiter ClickZ, "Creative Marketing Destruction - Add Water & Blog," takes a deeper a deeper look at blogs...well beyond "digital diaries" and as an "add water and stir" publishing platform.