Wall Street Journal Tells Us Why We Need a Corporate Blog

I talk a lot about monitoring the value of listening to the conversation about your brand, product, service or company and I point to a lot of tools for doing just that. Here now the Wall Street Journal agrees that blogs and other forms of consumer created media (i.e. forums and chat rooms) provide very useful customer intuition that can help shape product offerings.

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.

The article also points out why it is so important for companies to both monitor and participate in the discussions about themselves online.

Mr. Blackshaw says companies used to dismiss vocal complaints from one or two consumers as an aberration. But now, they have to pay attention because now those complainers may have blogs. "Those folks have influence with others via the Internet," he says. PR firms are hiring Intelliseek to monitor their clients, he adds, because once-obscure consumer issues are surfacing at awkward moments, such as CEO interviews with "reporters who go to Google and type in a brand and [then] ask tough questions."

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[WSJ.com on Blogs and Brand Insights]

tags: customer insights | customer focus groups | blog | monitor blogs | WSJ
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