Blog Survey Findings –PR Pros Want to Know What Bloggers Are Communicating

It has been approximated that there are 62 million blogs now in existence, with 175,000 more being created every day.  Every time that statistic is flashed, it is a natural instinct to think about how many of those blogs are just personal reflections designed for a small group of viewers.  Still, as the person charged with protecting your company’s or clients’ reputation, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by this relatively new media form that is both vast and so often unfettered by professional guidelines.

		What bloggers are saying about the organization - 89.5%
		What bloggers are saying about issues and trends in the business – 70.6%
		What blogs are saying about competitors – 59.4%
		Trends in pop culture that affect the business – 39.4%
		Trends in politics and world affairs that affect the business – 32.6%

Respondents were also able to add their own comments.  We received 52 personal statements, most of which boiled down to, “I want to know what is being said about my company/client and my competitors.” 

Clearly there is a strong sense of needing to know what bloggers are saying and yet only 19.7% of those who responded said that their organization had a formal procedure for monitoring the content of blogs that may impact their business.  The good news is that, as a client of BurrellesLuce, you do have a formal procedure in place for monitoring blogs, because we monitor over 40 million blogs every day.  

Realizing the importance of this new media is one thing.  Responsibly monitoring it is quite another.  We’ve entered into an exclusive partnership with KnowNow.  Using sophisticated search terms that we supply, KnowNow monitors the blog universe and delivers to our production facilities all entries that contain these search terms.  Our editors bring human intelligence to the process and weed out all of the blogs that do not match the intent of a client’s search.  Ultimately, what we deliver to you is about 20% of what was originally retrieved. 

This editing process is an important part of our production system, and it is what truly distinguishes BurrellesLuce from all other media and Internet monitoring firms.  The first phase of our monitoring is powered by sophisticated technology.  Once the news is captured and sorted, it is our final editing step that saves clients countless hours and untold frustration.  Because our editors have done the vetting, you are free to concentrate on the news that really pertains to your business without getting bogged down in the mire of information overload.