Tracking what consumers are saying about your brand isn’t an exercise in vanity, but can alert you to problems and help you refine products, finds Sean Hargrave
With the explosion in blogging, user reviews and feedback online, there’s a welter of data available about what consumers are saying about a company. This has spawned “buzz” specialists who report on sentiment towards your brand. But what’s the practical application of this eavesdropping ?
[...] as the scope of buzz expands you need machines to do the heavy lifting, argues Nick Blythe, general manager of Digimind, a French competitive intelligence specialist. “Most of our clients ask us to monitor up to 1000 sites and many are moving up to 5,000. For one client, we’re monitoring 30,000 sites That has to be done by software.” he says.
“Our larger clients need to track consumers and information about regulation around the world. For example, we forewarned [a company] about an issue scientists were talking about ahead of publication of research that showed probiotic yoghurts didn’t work as well when combined with a particular antibiotic It was then able to research its response in advance”.
Sean Hargrave, New Media Age, february 17
