Measuring Influence in the Blogosphere with BuzzLogic

Among the toughest tasks that marketers face daily is tracking what is being said about their company or its brands in the media, identifying which of the external voices are most influential and are having the most impact-positively or negatively-and then devising a strategy and specific tactics to influence the influencers. None of the existing tools for performing these tasks has proven adequate to the challenge of social media like blogs which are host to millions of conversations that are constantly being updated around the clock. Blog search engines can tell you who is popular, but not who is influential. Traditional brand monitoring and analysis services can tell you what a sample of bloggers was thinking a few weeks ago, but that's ancient history in the blogosphere. Cymphony and several other companies are also in the game. This is a case where the company whose algorithms produce the most finely-tuned, accurate and current information stands to emerge as the big winner among corporate communicators, PR firms, customer service and market researchers and other areas where discerning the "voice of the customer" is essential. Based on what I've seen so far, and its "disruptive" price of $500 per month to track 20 conversations (queries), 25 influencers deep, I like BuzzLogic's chances of being that winner. If markets really are conversations, BuzzLogic may just have come up with the ultimate eavesdropping device. Bookmark Murdok: Jerry Bowles has more than 30 years of varied experience as a writer, editor, marketing consultant, corporate communications director and blogger. For the past 20 years, he has produced and written special supplements on new technologies for a number of magazines, including Forbes, Fortune and Newsweek.

http://www.enterpriseweb2.com