Savvy companies are doing more than just listening to the online buzz—they’re learning how to enter the conversation.

Ever since the first ads were created, marketers have searched for the best way to get feedback from customers. Today, the Web has turned that quest upside down, providing more feedback than most companies know what to do with.

Illustration by Cat Tersigni

Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Nielsen BuzzMetrics puts it this way: “For me, the epiphany was realizing that listening is the new strategy.” Blackshaw got his start in this area in the late 1990s as co-leader of Procter & Gamble’s first interactive marketing team. Today, he and his team at Nielsen BuzzMetrics provide data and consulting to large enterprises seeking a handle on what Blackshaw and others in the industry call consumer generated media. “We’re helping companies listen to conversations across multiple venues on the Internet, whether it’s on blogs, message boards, forums, or ratings and review sites,” he said. “We’re metering the megaphones, so to speak.”

Peel the onion
Blackshaw said Nielsen BuzzMetrics’ clients vary widely in the degree of analysis they want on computer generated media. “We have some [clients] that want to microanalyze everything. They want to peel the onion; they want to know about all their competitors and track every event.” Of course, such analysis doesn’t come cheap; Blackshaw said pricing for reports runs from $20,000 to $100,000 and beyond. But regardless of how closely online feedback is monitored, the response to the feedback is always the same: how can we join the conversation?

And that’s where things get tricky, say both Blackshaw and Blake Cahill, vice president of corporate marketing at Visible Technologies. “Some people are in a rush to get out there and create a blog around their brand. That’s where we’ve seen some funny things happen,” said Cahill.

Visible Technologies offers its TruCast software/ service to help companies monitor consumer generated media and respond to comments on blogs, social networks, etc. Typical engagements with large enterprises run $20,000 to $30,000 per month.

Cahill said he’s seen plenty of examples of companies taking the wrong approach. He pointed to Wal-Marting Across America blog, in which the people posting about their road trip were paid.

“It was sniffed out very quickly,” said Cahill. “That’s one of the unique things about the blogosphere: someone who is not genuine can be detected almost immediately. The PR voice or investor-relations voice or market-ese is not how people talk.”

Of course, some companies are savvy about taking advantage of new media; Cahill points to Dove’s Women for Beauty campaign as an example. “Smart companies are rebuilding the way they market, using word of mouth and social media. They are being transparent and embracing everything being said about them to drive results,” he said.

Early signals
Nielsen Buzzmetrics’ Blackshaw has been working with Toyota for several years and says the company is taking the right approach by trying to reinvent many of their business processes based on active listening to the customer. “They are really looking for those early signals into quality,” he said.

What many companies do not understand, he explained, is that rather than trying to influence conversations about the company, brand managers should take a step back and ask what processes contribute to favorable (or unfavorable) commentary. “Look at brands like Southwest Airlines—Southwest generally gets favorable consumer generated media emanating from its HR policies,” he said, referring to the airline’s emphasis on empowering employees to take care of customers in a multitude of situations.

Similarly, electronics retailers often receive negative commentary related to customer service or rebate programs. “What brands need to understand is that all business processes contribute to online conversations,” Blackshaw said.

In addition to taking a root-cause approach to consumer generated media, Blackshaw recommends making your corporate Web site more agile in preparation for defending your brand. He noted that corporate Web sites are generally inflexible, requiring executives to enlist their agency or IT department to make changes. “It’s usually so time consuming and costly that everyone says: forget it,” he said. But brand enthusiasts will often go to the corporate Web site during an event (good or bad), and Web site home pages should be updated to reflect this. “Consumers who are curious may default to the brand Web site, quickly find out it’s useless, and default to an activist site that’s aggregating content, providing answers, and providing solutions,” Blackshaw said, citing the recent pet-food contamination problem. “I think companies need to look at sites like Pet Connection and ask themselves: what are we missing from a being-relevant perspective?”

Blogs can also help companies enter the conversation, as long as they are created with the right purpose in mind. For example, Blackshaw and his team helped Toyota create its Open Road blog, run by the vice president of PR. Toyota has the right idea, said Blackshaw—it is not expecting the blog to be a major source of influence.

“You don’t necessarily do a blog because you think you’re going to achieve massive reach. You may only be concerned that a couple of reporters get your side of the story in real time,” he explained.

Still, having that blog can be a major advantage in times of crisis, according to Blackshaw. “A blog can be very important when it comes to defensive branding,” he said. “It is probably not going to get you large amounts of reach, but it will come in handy when you need to inform the public about a specific posting or incident,” he said.

Another important step during a crisis, one that few companies take, is purchasing keyword ads. Most companies only buy ads around “positive” searches for their companies, Blackshaw said. “But if you’re McDonald’s, and someone is pulling a recall on you, and people type in ‘McDonald’s recall,’ you want them to find your advertising links that brings them to a place that clarifies the record.”

Cahill agreed, noting that monitoring alone is becoming insufficient. “The time to participate is now,” he said. Cahill sums up the struggle companies face as they try to get their arms around the new world of consumer generated media. “If people still think they have control of their brands, they’re mistaken. It’s already gone—it’s been hijacked. The question now is how successfully you learn to dialog.”