The Wall Street Journal for June 23, 2005 features an article by William F. Bulkeley detailing how various companies are using blog analysis to gather market and brand insights. in "Marketers Scan Blogs for Brand Insights," the author reports how various companies are hiring blog watching firms and new technologies to see what bloggers out there are saying about their brands. (Note on the link. The article is free today, but the usual caveat applies, which is why I give enough so readers can get it in print or off one of the databases at their library.)
For instance, one of these studies helped a company determine that teens were anxious over exceeding their minutes on their cellphones, which explains why we are seeing more campaigns geared to teens emphasizing more leeway on minute for instance. According to the article, "marketers say bloggers' unsolicited opinions and offhand comments are a source of invaluable insights that are hard to get elsewhere" (B1). The article does caution that what bloggers say does not always correlate to how a brand is perceived. The article also mentions Intelliseek's BlogPulse as an example of a website useful to do word searches and see how they compare. The basic tools are word searching and counting links, which places like BlogPulse and Technorati can do. However, marketers will pay big companies for more in-depth analysis.
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