blog sentiment for retailers

There's no doubt that bloggers opinions count these days. But if you're a retailer, is the blogosphere a good or bad place for opinions?

If you believe the Mainstream Media (MSM), you'd be fooled into believing that bloggers only post about the negative things in life and seek to destroy reputations rather than say posisitve things. Well, research agency Carma has found the opposite!

In their report on whether Negativity does prevail in Consumer Generated Media, they found that..

the blogosphere was unfavorable in less than 28 percent of posts, while it was favorable in more than 41 percent of posts. Based on this data alone, it is not accurate to say that the blogosphere is pervasively negative. Perhaps the blogosphere is negative in other ways . . .

Or to put it in diagram form (from eMarketer):













If you're a retailer, are you monitoring blog postings or even tracking the collective sentiment of this influential group of commenters? Even if you start now... you may be suprised by what you find.

Collective endorsement

Alastair Duncan has recently used the term 'Collective Endosement' in his blog posting 'Communities are the future' and I think it is a very well chosen phrase. It sums up how specific groups bonded by a shared sentiment (and not necessarily geography) flock around a particular idea.

Alastair also poses the question:

"Will communities be the dictators of content in the future?"

and he asks if these communities could gatekeeper the outcome by this collective endorsement.

I'd like to take this idea a little further and state that I don't believe it will be entire communities that will control this sentiment all the time and that key influencers within these communities will often lead the collective embrace (or attack).

However, unlike the concept of The Tipping Point, where these are super-influencial social magnets.... these people could be normal, everyday people. The downside is that it therefore makes it far harder to understand the dynamics involved and plan your influencing strategy accordingly.

The Hunter vs the fisherman - Part 2

The futility of chasing your content around the web (the hunter) means another approach is required. I've previously mentioned that the trawling (fisherman) analogy is far more apt and others have used this before (thanks Jeremiah)

So how do you go about casting your net to find out where your company information is scattered online?

• You can use search engines such as Google/Yahoo/MSN etc.


• You can use sites specific to your industry/vertical etc


• You can check user-generated media aggregators such as Technorati etc.

However, I was recently made aware of a tool called Brandwatch, a tool that tracks a wide range of various sources (news, blogs, etc.) and measures the mentions of a brand and its sentiment, as well as the source. I'm impressed with this product and think that it provides a really useful way to categorise a significant part of the Blogosphere and other public opinion forums.

Cymphony's Orchestra product is also a clever tool that "integrates innovative Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology with expert analysis to identify the people, issues and trends impacting your business"... although I've yet to see how it works...

The evolution of the trawlerman for discovering the collective sentiment has started.....

Using the Collective Sentiment

Collective Intelligence taps the expertise of a group rather than the individual, usually to make decisions (not 'design by committe'; but more usually 'if 2 brains are better than 1, then many are better than a few') . However, tapping into the collective sentiment could be aterrible way to gain insight. But doing it timely and in the right way could identify feelings or other tendancies towards companies and their products.


Think of it like a focus group for the 21st Century... your users/consumer/customers all commenting in their own ways about what presses their particular mephoric buttons. Normal people generating pockets of 'buzz' across the digital landscape or alternatively generating misinformation about your products (or you). They blog about their face cream, they twitter about the latest flavour of chicken sauce or they load your company logo to their MySpace area.

Just as some companies use distributed co-creation (user-centred innovation) to solve problems by encouraging feedback and even facilitating changes to products by their users*, we can utilise the people and structures beyond the 'walled garden' of complete influence for PR purposes. Although this is already happening (don't all company PR execs secretly 'lurk' in product discussion areas?), how many companies actually understand and measure the collective comments and sentiment?

*(If you don't believe me, just ask why so many Web2.0 products are in permanent 'beta' .Then look at the requested features list from its top users)

Dear Santa, can you please send me:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wikinomics-Mass-Collaboration-Changes-Everything/dp/1843546361/

One word of warning though:
"Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups" - W. F. Nietzsche