Figmentations

I’ll start this post with a verbatim summary of a news article as found on GMA SmartBrief, March 3, 2006:

Bloggers preview trends for marketers
Nielsen BuzzMetrics, the buzz marketing company formed last week with the merger of BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek, samples hundreds of thousands of blog posts and comments daily, to provide clients with an up-to-the-minute cross-section of online consumer chatter. More and more, large companies are adding blog monitoring to their market research arsenal — the food industry giant ConAgra, for example, got wind of the decline of the low-carb fad in part via blog comments. The
Washington Post (3/3) (furl link)

Makes sense that if corporations and big businesses are striving to use blogs to personalize their businesses in the hopes of establishing trust and touting their brands over others, that it would be important to also be that fly on the wall of consumer conversations.

It’s a natural next step that the market research industry keep an eye out, too. According to this article, it is interesting to see that BuzzMetrics is not only measuring the quantity of online mentions, but also the quality and tone (i.e., positive or negative) of these postings. Definitely the way to add value.