What if you could sit in and be the silent fly on the wall as you listen attentively to your customers or your competitor's customers as they discuss their various wants and needs? For years this meant you had to sit for hours behind a two-way mirror and listen to live focus groups ramble on in places like Columbus, Ohio (no offense, Columbus!). Focus groups are still important. However, AdWeek reports this week that some savvy companies are increasingly looking at the blogosphere as an endless fountain of consumer insights.
And why not? There's a mountain of gold in thar hills, and it's available 24/7. However, there's a downside - there's a lot of data to cull through and it needs to be done with a critical eye; the eye of a trained PR professional.
So before you delegate this critical task to one of the fine, yet pricey analytical tools - e.g. BuzzMetrics or Intelliseek - consider asking your PR agency analyze the data smog. As your in-the-trenches partners, they will be able to unearth insights that others will simply not be able to match because they live and breathe your business day in and day out.
It's my conviction that the greatest answers do not lie so much the data itself or even in the analytics, but in the deep thread-by-thread content analysis that really only a blog-savvy PR professional familiar with all of the issues can accurately distill. The only outsourced provider I have seen close to accomplishing this is TechDirt. The best PR agencies are not just mouthpieces but your eyes and ears. Are they watching the blogosphere for you for critical insights?
