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 16:00

Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst for Forrester and author of the well-read Web Strategist blog, is our guest on the Marketing Edge. You know, as of this posting, he is at the top of the Tweeterboard, a ranking of influencers using the microblogging platform Twitter.

In this podcast, we touch upon his big three trends to look for in 2008 and the following items:

-Social media is like jazz: don’t ask, just listen. He explains it better than I can write about it.

-The corporate structure needs to become more flexible if social media is to gain greater status. Owyang believes 2008 will see a rise in the job function of community manager in large companies.

With more than 3,000 followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook, do you wonder how he juggles his day? First rule: Get up early.

We also get into one of my key themes about social media: It’s making companies incorporate some of the best practices of political and grassroots organizations. Listen, be responsive, be sensitive, seek consensus, build your base — those are just a few. Platforms like Twitter help facilitate the movement of people and opinions that give life to ideas. This is the essence of the political democratic process.

As corporations seek a greater understanding of social media, the social graph will play an important role. This is another Owyang prediction for 2008.

Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to invite all your friends to join you on some other social network? Owyang predicts the expansion of widget networks and with it the expansion of the use of social media in 2008.

Lastly, I promised Jeremiah I’d post a link to one of my favorite places in San Francisco, the Buena Vista, home of the Irish Coffee.

Share your comments on this post. For each comment posted, Provident Partners gives a food item to a St. Paul food shelter.

Last call for the drawing of the book “Join the Conversation” by Joseph Jaffe. Send an e-mail to marketingedge@providentpartners.net and we will include you in the drawing. The winner gets a copy of the book with my comments in the margins; it’s our way of continuing the conversation. Get your e-mail in by midnight on Dec. 19.

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?