Reading & Writing Blogs @ Work
That the exponentially growing blogosphere, which according to some estimates could be doubling in size every few months, was bound to impact businesses was logical– after all one can never ignore size. Yet, we probably didn’t expect the extent of influence individuals letting out a piece of their mind could have as we see today. Some top brands have already experienced the fallout of not paying much attention to the infectious nature of negative opinion seeded across the blogosphere. Jupiter Research has put a bit of science into validating the potential consequences of brands not taking bloggers seriously, according to a report on NetImperative.
According to the research, while the majority of European online users are ‘passive’ ie. they do not participate in online forums or respond to surveys or blog (not too different is it from real life, anywhere, for that matter: how many people really speak up?), a small minority of active bloggers pack quite a potent punch– they are the influential lot who could suddenly wipe quite a bit of sheen off your brand.
Companies that are serious about building and enhancing their brand equity realise what a challenge it is and the kind of time and investment it takes to do so. So, can they afford to let themselves be affected by this vociferous minority?
As a company, we help some top names protect their brands online with a suite of sophisticated products we have built that leverages all our accumulated knowledge in search/online marketing. So, I’d definitely urge companies conscious of the asset value of their brand to look at two sides of blogging: a) ensuring they are keeping track of what is being written about them —- brand name protection goes beyond monitoring brand-bidding in PPC campaigns that we so often talk about b) taking a proactive approach and use the same medium (blogs) to counter the potential public relations/ marketing challenges. One can never underestimate the value of timely, open and quality communication on building and protecting brand value.
