The panel from BlogWorld on “Tracking Reputation in the Blogsphere” provided excellent insight into how corporate skeptics can make sense of new-media junkies’ hype about online conversations. More importantly, determining in a methodical analysis whether those conversations are something for corporate execs to be concerned about or join.

The ability to listen to the conversations taking place online is of the greatest value to companies. The reason is that they don’t need to be told about losing control of their brand, which can drive brand managers and CEOs insane. They don’t need to come up with frequent content that makes people happy or to write responses to blog posts, which can drive marketers to drink (more than they currently do).

No, the ability to listen to the conversation plays to the corporate desire and history for research. The corporate structure appreciates research of markets, research of competitors, and research of potentially new product demands.

It is also a way to validate whether there are conversations going on that company leaders should care about. An example would be if a brand manager, VP of a line of business, or product development manager was handed a report that said, “In the month of April, there were 25,000 mentions of your product on 250 blogs and user review sections. Twenty-five percent of those mentions were negative, 50 percent positive and 25 percent neutral.”

Take that the to the next level of detail by highlighting the context of those conversations.

One of the presenters on the panel was Howard Kaushansky, president of Umbria, who highlighted how conversations can be ascertained though sophisticated language processing and searching of blogs and other social networks, such as MySpace and, soon, Facebook.

Excellent presentation, as you can see the level of detail available with some of these tools. Companies need to understand the wealth of information that will increase enormously during the next 2 years and can be analyzed, if corporate executives looks at the blogsphere as a research resource and not just a play thing for MySpacers.

This interview with Howard, called “Listen to Conversations,” has a case in point about how consumers purchasing a pair of jeans labeled themselves. For example, Gen Xers have moved into the “fit” category as opposed those who label themselves as caring about the labels they wear. Another example in this conversation with Howard is how you can pick out mentions within the body of a blog. So, for example, if a blog about parenting mentions that the mom or dad had a great pumpkin latte at Starbucks, Umbria brings that mention to light and gives it some context.

Click on the Utterz player at the right or click here to listen to that interview.

What is your take on whether companies can gain value from just listening to the conversations, especially if they are skeptical of participating?

Share on StumbleUpon