You make some really interesting points and back them up with some compelling statistics. If you are interested, I just write about (for Media Bullseye, a publication in the US) and blogged on a four-part series about online reputation management: http://mediabullseye.com/mb/2008/06/online-reputation-management-p-2.html

Part 4 is here: http://www.intersectionofonlineandoffline.com/?p=29 and the rest follow in reverse chronological order.

Really enjoy your blog.

Mark

I had a wonderful meeting today though with a client that is in a very large corporate here let me know that he and his marketing team are starting to track references that bloggers are making about their service. It’s a great start.

I see you are really making strides with some great customers coming on board. You must be thrilled.

Thank you so much for picking this up and writing about it

I noted your comment on the geography and type of responder and wanted to give you more data there – yes we had about 85 respondents from around the world (but mostly US based) and the type of responder was mostly B2B marketers (who are my readers of my blog)

thanks again

Paul

Thanks for pulling out these stats. I definitely love to see the sound bites.

And your comments on the number of companies monitoring their brands online are pretty accurate to the polls I’ve taken in various venues where I’ve spoken on the topic of social media monitoring. We are definitely at the start of the curve – though the companies that are doing it are certainly seeing the benefits of listening and outreaching to customers and potential customers.

Thanks for the post.

David – Radian6

It’s interesting the response that you are getting from some people – I guess they have not realised the influence some bloggers have with their articles coming high in search engine results and with their blogs being read by thousands of people.

And as for message boards – well the discussion can go on and on and even spin out of control can’t it?

Are the business people you are speaking with in small businesses or with large brands?

As for Google Alerts, a tool I refer people to all the time, you’d probably not be suprised how few people know it exists or know how to get the most out of it.

I’ve had people say to me ‘who cares what some crank is saying about you in a blog or on a message board’ – wrong attitude!