Blogosphere – The new realm of opportunities
EmPower Research
August 03, 2007
By Shoma Bakre
There’s a whole new world of consumer opinion emerging on the Internet. It’s called the “blogosphere” and it is ripe with opportunity for your brands”, Chris Hoyt, President, Hoyt and Company
The Evolving Media Landscape
The media landscape is now in a state of flux with the continual emergence of new non-traditional media besides the traditional media forms. Now, there are newer media options emerging, such as, blogs, podcasting, Internet discussion forums and comparison sites. These present exciting challenges and opportunities to marketers and companies. These changes are fueled by technology, which has now become a lifestyle and personality statement of a very tech savvy consumer audience.
Online discussions that are on the record and blogs are immensely influential besides being credible sources of information. Podcasting is the latest way to catch niche audiences. The consumer is the catalyst to these developments and explosion of these new information channels. The consumer is both the driver and the target of the new media communications. It is the consumer who is changing the way information is received, controlling the media consumption patterns and habits after deciding and analyzing the merits of one channel over another.
Tracking and analyzing communication channels like blogs, RSS, podcasts, consumer discussion forums, new online media, citizen journalism, new constituencies of worldwide real-time bloggers, consumers, and users give interesting as well as useful insights into consumer minds. As such, companies are no longer in control - messaging and the task of setting the communications agenda is now almost totally controlled by customers, employees or sometimes even competitors. There are many examples of consumer-generated media. Blogs, podcasting, RSS feeds, wikis, collaborative publishing, instant messaging (IM) and smart mobs are the latest ways people receive, publish and even make news. These often play a more important role than traditional media.
A study of blogs and other consumer generated messaging gives companies a better understanding of who their audiences are, and what it is that interests and motivates them. This in turn helps them to come up with attention-grabbing and relevant marketing/corporate messages and programs. It probably doesn’t make sense to fax a blogger and RSS feeds and podcasts may be a better way to spread unfiltered corporate or marketing messages to various audiences across the world. Paramount Studios for instance have been immensely successful with a niche film, Hustle & Flow, which they promoted through music blogs and fan sites. According to thirty five percent of viewers, online discussions were what motivated them to see the film.
It seems apparent that the potential of these tools for “building brand evangelists on the Internet” will keep on increasing. As these tools grow in popularity it will become very difficult to ignore them, as they will have to be considered as a viable source of valuable information about the consumer. Thus, the key to success for companies is to utilize technology and the emerging new media to their advantage. It is for the marketers now to capitalize on the opportunity with focus on positioning and developing strategic relationships between brands and all its stakeholders.
Blogs – The Latest Media Tool
Blogs are growing at lightning speed. Technorati, a blog search engine, reported an average of 1.2 million blog postings per day during November 2005. On December 13, 2005, Technorati reported that there were 22.9 million blogs around the world with about 80,000 new blogs being added daily. Gen Y, Gen X and the Boomers, looks as if almost everyone has jumped onto the blog bandwagon. If one looks at the size of the blogging community with 22+ MM blogs online, one cannot help but take notice. Very simply put, it is ‘Word of mouth’ media, consumer-controlled and self-publishing that can be very effectively used to a company’s advantage.
Company blogs have also been developed. Prevalence may vary from sector to sector but the potential rewards for blog tracking and analysis is the same for all. The company strategy towards blogs may also vary, some respond whereas others do not. Yet if we take a serious look there is no stopping a forward-thinking company from taking full advantage of the digital sphere. Time Inc. prepares a morning report summarizing mentions of the company on an extensive list of websites, including blogs. Selected blogs are on the media lists, to receive press releases and other corporate information. GM and Boeing run official blogs bylined by executives. Microsoft allows employees to write their own blogs discussing company matters. “If anything, blogging is another channel to have a direct conversation with customers and partners, in addition to what we do with the media”, says Larry Cohen, GM of corporate communications for Microsoft.
The implications of blogs for corporate communicators and researchers are far reaching. The blogging community is a very critical link to the consumer mind and companies are rapidly beginning to pay attention. Companies have begun to monitor what people are saying about them, as they can no longer afford to ignore this extremely influential phenomenon. Bloggers are publicly sharing their personal experiences and opinions their likes, dislikes, rationale for purchase decisions and recommendations to friends, and more.
However, it is interesting to note that, according to PR Week Corporate Survey 2005, only roughly 22% of corporate respondents say that they monitor the Blogosphere for mentions of their company, either “a great deal” (3.9%) or “a moderate amount” (18.4%). On the other hand, 45.6% admit they don’t monitor blogs at all. At the same time almost all of the in-house corporate communicators recognize the Blogosphere and its potential to impact their own brands as “an efficient and effective way to quickly disseminate a lot of information on a regular basis.”
Another survey, the Technorati Blog Analyst Firm survey 2005, takes a look at the blogging community to see why they blog and whether the bloggers know whom they are interacting with. Most of the bloggers surveyed blogged to create visibility as an authority in the field (33.8%) many others blogged simply to create a blog of their thoughts (31.5%). More than half of the bloggers surveyed (56%) were unaware of which company representative they were interacting with most of the time. Most of the time they do buy products before blogging and the most significant is the revelation that the company PR people often do not contact them. The common thread between both surveys, PR Week Corporate Survey and Technorati, is the fact that blogging as an activity and bloggers as a community are still not taken very seriously.
Yet, the Blogosphere is here to stay to give companies important insights to the consumer mind. A formal blog monitoring program will give important leads to companies and a strategic use of the blogospere can also enable companies to mould bloggers’ opinions in their favor. A close monitoring will keep companies updated on what this consumer-generated media is saying about them so that proactive as well as corrective measures can be taken to seize nascent opportunities and avert any potential damages. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! As Mike Spataro, EVP of web relations, Weber Shandwick said, “Clearly, ignoring the blogging community today would be like not paying attention to the World Wide Web 10 years ago.”
Sources:
1) Marketing Management Survey 2005, PRWeek/MS&L; 2) Corporate Survey 2005, PRWeek, Weber Shandwick Worldwide 3) Mining the Blogosphere, Chris Hoyt, President, Hoyt & Company 4) https://extranet.edelman.com/bloggerstudy
There’s a whole new world of consumer opinion emerging on the Internet. It’s called the “blogosphere” and it is ripe with opportunity for your brands”, Chris Hoyt, President, Hoyt and Company
The Evolving Media Landscape
The media landscape is now in a state of flux with the continual emergence of new non-traditional media besides the traditional media forms. Now, there are newer media options emerging, such as, blogs, podcasting, Internet discussion forums and comparison sites. These present exciting challenges and opportunities to marketers and companies. These changes are fueled by technology, which has now become a lifestyle and personality statement of a very tech savvy consumer audience.
Online discussions that are on the record and blogs are immensely influential besides being credible sources of information. Podcasting is the latest way to catch niche audiences. The consumer is the catalyst to these developments and explosion of these new information channels. The consumer is both the driver and the target of the new media communications. It is the consumer who is changing the way information is received, controlling the media consumption patterns and habits after deciding and analyzing the merits of one channel over another.
Tracking and analyzing communication channels like blogs, RSS, podcasts, consumer discussion forums, new online media, citizen journalism, new constituencies of worldwide real-time bloggers, consumers, and users give interesting as well as useful insights into consumer minds. As such, companies are no longer in control - messaging and the task of setting the communications agenda is now almost totally controlled by customers, employees or sometimes even competitors. There are many examples of consumer-generated media. Blogs, podcasting, RSS feeds, wikis, collaborative publishing, instant messaging (IM) and smart mobs are the latest ways people receive, publish and even make news. These often play a more important role than traditional media.
A study of blogs and other consumer generated messaging gives companies a better understanding of who their audiences are, and what it is that interests and motivates them. This in turn helps them to come up with attention-grabbing and relevant marketing/corporate messages and programs. It probably doesn’t make sense to fax a blogger and RSS feeds and podcasts may be a better way to spread unfiltered corporate or marketing messages to various audiences across the world. Paramount Studios for instance have been immensely successful with a niche film, Hustle & Flow, which they promoted through music blogs and fan sites. According to thirty five percent of viewers, online discussions were what motivated them to see the film.
It seems apparent that the potential of these tools for “building brand evangelists on the Internet” will keep on increasing. As these tools grow in popularity it will become very difficult to ignore them, as they will have to be considered as a viable source of valuable information about the consumer. Thus, the key to success for companies is to utilize technology and the emerging new media to their advantage. It is for the marketers now to capitalize on the opportunity with focus on positioning and developing strategic relationships between brands and all its stakeholders.
Blogs – The Latest Media Tool
Blogs are growing at lightning speed. Technorati, a blog search engine, reported an average of 1.2 million blog postings per day during November 2005. On December 13, 2005, Technorati reported that there were 22.9 million blogs around the world with about 80,000 new blogs being added daily. Gen Y, Gen X and the Boomers, looks as if almost everyone has jumped onto the blog bandwagon. If one looks at the size of the blogging community with 22+ MM blogs online, one cannot help but take notice. Very simply put, it is ‘Word of mouth’ media, consumer-controlled and self-publishing that can be very effectively used to a company’s advantage.
Company blogs have also been developed. Prevalence may vary from sector to sector but the potential rewards for blog tracking and analysis is the same for all. The company strategy towards blogs may also vary, some respond whereas others do not. Yet if we take a serious look there is no stopping a forward-thinking company from taking full advantage of the digital sphere. Time Inc. prepares a morning report summarizing mentions of the company on an extensive list of websites, including blogs. Selected blogs are on the media lists, to receive press releases and other corporate information. GM and Boeing run official blogs bylined by executives. Microsoft allows employees to write their own blogs discussing company matters. “If anything, blogging is another channel to have a direct conversation with customers and partners, in addition to what we do with the media”, says Larry Cohen, GM of corporate communications for Microsoft.
The implications of blogs for corporate communicators and researchers are far reaching. The blogging community is a very critical link to the consumer mind and companies are rapidly beginning to pay attention. Companies have begun to monitor what people are saying about them, as they can no longer afford to ignore this extremely influential phenomenon. Bloggers are publicly sharing their personal experiences and opinions their likes, dislikes, rationale for purchase decisions and recommendations to friends, and more.
However, it is interesting to note that, according to PR Week Corporate Survey 2005, only roughly 22% of corporate respondents say that they monitor the Blogosphere for mentions of their company, either “a great deal” (3.9%) or “a moderate amount” (18.4%). On the other hand, 45.6% admit they don’t monitor blogs at all. At the same time almost all of the in-house corporate communicators recognize the Blogosphere and its potential to impact their own brands as “an efficient and effective way to quickly disseminate a lot of information on a regular basis.”
Another survey, the Technorati Blog Analyst Firm survey 2005, takes a look at the blogging community to see why they blog and whether the bloggers know whom they are interacting with. Most of the bloggers surveyed blogged to create visibility as an authority in the field (33.8%) many others blogged simply to create a blog of their thoughts (31.5%). More than half of the bloggers surveyed (56%) were unaware of which company representative they were interacting with most of the time. Most of the time they do buy products before blogging and the most significant is the revelation that the company PR people often do not contact them. The common thread between both surveys, PR Week Corporate Survey and Technorati, is the fact that blogging as an activity and bloggers as a community are still not taken very seriously.
Yet, the Blogosphere is here to stay to give companies important insights to the consumer mind. A formal blog monitoring program will give important leads to companies and a strategic use of the blogospere can also enable companies to mould bloggers’ opinions in their favor. A close monitoring will keep companies updated on what this consumer-generated media is saying about them so that proactive as well as corrective measures can be taken to seize nascent opportunities and avert any potential damages. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! As Mike Spataro, EVP of web relations, Weber Shandwick said, “Clearly, ignoring the blogging community today would be like not paying attention to the World Wide Web 10 years ago.”
Sources:
1) Marketing Management Survey 2005, PRWeek/MS&L; 2) Corporate Survey 2005, PRWeek, Weber Shandwick Worldwide 3) Mining the Blogosphere, Chris Hoyt, President, Hoyt & Company 4) https://extranet.edelman.com/bloggerstudy
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