Time 32:16

Plenty of attention is given to participating in blogs, join the conversation, be open, be authentic, yada yada yada. The early adopters have tested the social media space with ample case studies for dozens of new books and information for panel discussions.

The hidden winners in the blogosphere who get a fraction of the fanfare are market researchers. This podcast is dedicated to the corporate executives who are skeptics of joining the conversation, but as you’ll hear here, have considerable reason to at least listen to it, it being first the podcast and then the thousands of conversations taking place on the web daily.

Look at just one segment of commentary and social media, www.tripadvisor.com, they have more than 10 million reviews of hotels. Forrester research shows that 36 percent of travelers look at reviews and of them, 73 percent report the reviews affect their choices. More from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer - It’s just the tip of the iceberg known as the blogosphere, but in reality is a bunch of people talking just like they do at parties, conference rooms, or ball games. The only difference is online, you can listen in on them.

This podcast is the second and concluding episode of a conversation with Umbria founder Howard Kaushansky. Umbria, at www.umbrialistens.com is one of a handful of companies that provide detailed insights into what people are taking about in blogs, and reviewers’ comments on the web and to a great extent who is saying it.

The bottom line is this

1) There are millions of comments being made on the web about nearly every industry or profession.
2) Even if your company has no intention of starting a blog, the comments that exist can provide significant insight into your company, your competitors, and your market.
3) Blogs and social media is not just a playground of the younger generation, middle age baby boomers use social media, blogs, and travel sites just as much as the 18 -24 year old set.

On another note, Marketing Edge listener Alison Coffey is the winner of the Join the Conversation book drawing. Our next book is Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers. To throw your name in the drawing send me an email at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with the words New Influencers in the subject line.

Time 12:56

The first stop for marketers who are attempting to determine how to approach social media is to listen to the conversations taking place on the web. Most executives are going to ask, what are people saying about our company or our industry? Who are they and does it matter to us?

While the numbers for social networking are mind boggling, an estimated 60 million users on Facebook alone, the perplexing issue for marketers that have must justify their spending is what is the impact to the company, will it grow sales, brand, influence? Or conversely, will not being there hurt us in some way?

In this podcast we highlight one company that can help answer those questions. Umbria, who can be found at www.umbrialistens.com. There tools search blogs, product review comments, and other social media sites looking for company mentions and more importantly context. For example, it is not good enough to learn that Starbucks was mentioned, but that a woman having a bad day found a moment of peace over an egg nog latte at Starbucks. Now that is listening. Umbria industry reports include healthcare, consumer electronics, and other industries

For those into the viral marketing concept, whether Umbria or a strategy that includes alerts and watches from Google, Technorati, Digg and others, the key is having a process that puts your ear to the ground – sorry had to use a cliché somewhere in this piece. Other tools include Sentiment Metrics and Cymfony, there are plenty of choices. Ths issue is with growing numbers of participants in social media, this tactic should be on your 2008 coporate marketing budget.

Do you have a strategy for listening to social media? What tactics do you find helpful?

Join the Conversation Giveaway

Joseph Jaffe’s book Join the Conversation is a good one. Well worth the read. We are giving away a copy with my comments included in the margins. It’s my way of joining the conversation - email me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with Conversation in the subject line. We’ll have a drawing for the winner on December 19.

Giving Back

Every comment and email we get Provident Partners donates a food item to a St. Paul food shelter. Last month 24 items were donated. Thanks for sharing.

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?