InsideGoogle

Search Engine Strategies: Blogs, Board and Posts

The next session I attended was called Blogs, Boards, and Posts: Capturing Consumer Buzz Online.

Gary Stein, a senior analyst for Jupiter Research, kicked things off, talking about how people look for trust agents to help them decide what to buy. While brand names are the number one determinor of trust, people are a close second, so blogs play a critical role.

When users search for companies, 18% of the results are corporate info and 12% are media coverage, while consumer generated content makes up 26% of the results. Companies spend so much money making sure the media likes them, but it also needs to work to appeal to online pundits, from bloggers to consumer reviewers.

One in four engage with “informal media”. 34% chat, 23% post or read message boards, 16% read personal pages, 11% go to financial info sites, 8% go to their own created site, 6% read blogs, and 2% blog.

Apple is great at reaching brand advocates. We were shown an iPod ad that looked like one of the professional, broadcast quality, and (most importantly) fun ads Apple runs, and then Gary revealed it was made by a regular guy for his own site, not by Apple.

Final thought: Youth culture is adept at taking what’s done by marketing and remixing it in their own way. Nothing makes that possible like the internet.

The first panelist introduced was Jonathon Carson, President and CEO of BuzzMetrics. He discussed their products, which are designed to track word-of-mouth. They’re trying to bring the accountability of regular advertising to word of mouth. He’s also involved with BzzAgents.

Next was Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines and new AskJeeves employee. I love Bloglines, and I’m not going to belittle you by describing it. It is a rare product that is both viral and a useful tool for tracking viral messages (memes). He mentioned that Bloglines can let you set up a search and save it, and get feeds that include that search term. I have never used this feature, but I will definitely be using it in the future. He said part of the reason Bloglines went with AskJeeves (as opposed to the many other companies lookign to buy) was the Teoma search technology, which will be used to “blow out” Bloglines search capabilities.

Third up was Mike Nazzaro from Intelliseek. They take consumer statements on the web and aggregate it to produce data companies can analyze. They try to put scores on comments, determining the emotion behind it, how well it spreads and how much its trusted. They run PlanetFeedback.com, where you can give feedback to companies and products, data that they analyze as a “fly on the wall… analyzing water cooler conversations”.

Finally, but certainly not least, is Steve Rubel. He’s a major blogger, and VP of Client Services at CooperKatz. He noted that he gets 3-5,000 readers a day.

Gary posed to the panel the problem of natural Google Bombs, where a negative site (IHateStarbucks.com) turns up as number 2 in a search for a brand (Starbucks). Steve noted that Starbucks’ mistake is not having a blog, and not bringing this guy on to talk to him. Either he’ll come off as a kook and lose his credibility, or the company will look better by showing their interest in what consumers have to say.

Jonathon noted that many products are being built to the specs of Consumer Reports, as opposed to what the customers want, but that the market is finally trending towards the consumer.

Mark noted that many bloggers are early-adopter types and passionate, and certainly influencers. Even negative info is good, because it shows someone thinks it’s important, but companies need to engage these people as much as possible. He also noted that blog search is different from regular search, because fresh content is so much more important than even search relevance.

Mike stressed the importance of early warning. Companies must know what’s being said, monitoring blogs relevant to the company. If they wait several days, the buzz goes away and the message will be determined by someone other than yourself. One axample noted was the Swift Vets controversy, were he showed an actual tracking of internet chatter, blogs and message boards, with the internet discussing it to huge levels for several weeks before Kerry addressed it.

Steve commented, noting the Kryptonite bike lock controversy, where someone discovered that you could pick their locks with a ballpoint pen. Kryptonite was “sleeping”, having no idea until it hit The New York Times, who was reading the blogs. Had Kryptonite been following the conversation, the PR hit would have been significantly smaller. He says that his companies first job is to help companies to deal with controversies like these, which many companies have been very scared of since the blogosphere exploded.

Mike notes that the data comes from multiple sources. While blogs are a major source, companies should follow message boards and other forms of consumer commenting.

Jonathon notes that when you target a blog to market to, you may be reaching a small audience, but those people are exactly the people you’ll need to reach when any idea has to go big. If you can’t reach them, you can’t reach anyone else. You could call the blogosphere the world’s largest focus group.

Steve says that the smart journalists don’t view the bloggers as competition, but as helpers. He mentions how an alpha blogger like Robert Scoble can link to anything and watch it explode, and how he is responsible for much of Steve’s successes. Steve wants mark to add a feature to Bloglines where every time someone mentions something, he gets a notification, even to his phone, so companies can react quickly. He says anal retentive and message controllign companies should not have blogs, only those willing to be open. Blogs like Google’s and GM’s lose credibility without comments enabled.

I would just like to note that not everything I’m writing is exactly was said by the speakers. Some of it was me extrapolating an idea they posed, giving it some depth. If anything sounds stupid, it is probably my fault.

Here’s the panel, from afar…

… and zoomed in:

On the right is Steve Rubel, followed by Mike Nazarro, Mark Fletcher (obscured) and Jonathon Carson.

On the left is Gary Stein, and next to him is Jonathon again.

Sorry about some of the picture quality. I’m still learning how to adjust the camera based on the lighting.

February 28th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | 2 comments