Why your firm needs to monitor blogs via RSS feeds

Excellent article at CNET on the need for companies to monitor blogs.

“We pay attention to the blogosphere,” said Scott Anderson, HP’s director of enterprise brand communications, in a talk at the Syndicate conference in San Francisco in December. “Our audience is online. They’re having discussions about us and about our competitors, and they’re talking about the marketplace. It may be good, and it may be bad, but it’s important for us to pay attention to what’s being said out there.”…..’When you’re listening to the Internet, the discussion is taking place in real time,’ said Intelliseek spokeswoman Sue MacDonald…… HP considers bloggers–especially chief-level executives, journalists and “influencers in our market”–to be valuable filters for what people think about its products and services.

Large companies like Kraft, Canon, Ford Motor, Microsoft, Nokia, Philips, Sony, Procter & Gamble, Toyota may have high priced third party companies do their monitoring. Law firms and professional services businesses can monitor relevant discussion via a number of free and low-cost tools. Steve Rubel advises the use of Technorati, Google Blog Search, Pubsub and Icerocket.

And you gotta love how Steve told of the power of blogs.

When consumers have their own pen, they may not call in anymore. They may choose to blog about it, because they think they’ll get quicker service.

Beacuse of that Rubel recommends that clients keep a “lockbox” blog. He described it as “a blog you keep behind glass. In case of fire, break glass and blog.” That way companies can respond in a medium that the bloggers respect.