Keeping a Heads Up

As I began preparing for my E-marketing class tomorrow (it happens), I stumbled across (and by stumbled, I mean deliberately searched for "Listening to consumers, e-marketing") this article regarding listening to consumers.

Interesting to hear about Online Reputation Management (reputable enough for itself for an acronym- ORM!) which allows companies to be gather any online mention of the company. The article points out the importance of being able to monitor how consumers are perceiving the brand, as any negative information can be spread to many, many people within only a short period of time. In fact, the article states that "Forrester research has found that 25% of consumer respondents said they trusted the opinions of fellow consumers above all other forms of media referrals or advertising".

Utilizing Quirk's ORM, one can comprehensively gather online mentions of a company and channels them to a dedicated team to measure the relevance, credibility and impact of each mention. From there, a company can quickly respond appropriately to any "brand attacks" or "haemorrhage of customers".

Interesting to see how these new management tools are emerging as the shift to Web 2.0 continues. But, I wonder how effective it would be for a company, such as Microsoft, whose mentions are likely in the tens of thousands each day, and whose brand is well established. Perhaps this is likely suited to smaller companies, who are establishing their brand value and require more feedback to suss out any potential weaknesses or misconceptions with their product or service.