One of the first issues most organizations face in starting to work with blogs is that they're concerned what bloggers are saying about their products, services, brands, or company. There have been a few high-profile examples of companies getting blind-sided by negative sentiments in the blogosphere, or by public relations problems that seem to happen almost instantaneously due to the speed with which blogs let information be shared.

But in addition to concerns about crisis management, companies need to monitor the blogosphere in order to start participating in the conversations that take place between customers, partners, competitors, and your own employees. The key lesson: The conversation about your company and its work is already taking place, so you need to be aware of it and then, when you're ready, participate in it.

All of us who care about the work we do want to reach out to our customers, partners and employees. The potential benefits are many:

• Learn more about what your customers want
• Find out about issues which aren't problems now, but could become worse in the future
• Discover ideas for new products or services, or suggestions for improvements to existing offerings
• Help direct conversations about your industry in directions that emphasize your company's value
• Provide a human voice for your company and show potential customers or partners that you're willing to listen
• Empower your employees by letting them demonstrate their expertise
• Identify testimonials, blogs, and praise that can be fuel for your own marketing, promotional, or blogging efforts

Don't panic! They're not out to get you.

A lot of attention has been paid to companies which were caught unaware while a conversation about their products or services swept across a number of blogs, reached some of the more prominent sites, and eventually broke into the mainstream media on television, radio or in print newspapers. But despite the fact that this has happened a few times, this is not the main reason you should keep track of blog conversations about your company. What matters most? One simple fact:

Some companies may face bad PR from blogs; All companies have the opportunity to have a positive conversation through blogs.

A lot of people familiar with blogging are all too willing to use scare tactics, saying that the reason to start a blog is to avoid being attacked by detractors online. The truth is, any company big enough to have more than one customer is big enough to have at least one disgruntled member of its community. You can't avoid at least some negativity happening in response to your brands, products or company: The reason to blog is so that you can participate in the conversations that are already taking place.

How to track your company or brand in blogs

Once you've decided that the conversations taking place in blogs are important to your business you'll want to start following the dialogue so that you can be aware of any issues that arise. And eventually, you'll want to use that information to help your company respond or to provide fodder for your own blogging efforts.

Fortunately, tracking blogs can be a straightforward effort, requiring almost no expense and very little dedicated time.

Use simple searching tools

The first and simplest way to find out what public blogs are saying about your company or your industry is to search using the popular web search services. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are among the most popular, and all three services tend to favor blog content above other types of web pages because the information on blogs is frequently updated, generally well-presented, and is often formatted in a manner that's easier for the search engines to index.

To begin, just search for your company or product names, or for terms related to your industry such as competitor's names or issues that impact your business. On almost all these services, you'll be able to get an XML Feed of your search results (see "About Feeds"). With this feed, you're automatically notified when any new item that meets your criteria shows up on the web. You can often subscribe to be notified of new items by other channels as well, making new items show up as emails in your inbox, via instant message, or even as a text message to your mobile phone.

Once you're familiar with the basics of these search systems, you'll want to refine your search terms over time to eliminate any spurious results and to improve the quality of results. You'll also find over time that many of the results of standard web searches may be mentions in general-interest or trade press, which may be areas you already track using standard press monitoring services.

The next step after learning to track the web at large is to focus on just searching within blogs.

Use services designed to track blogs

The web search services mentioned above usually provide search engines designed specifically for tracking updates in blogs or on news sites. For example:

• Google Blog Search is available at http://blogsearch.google.com/
• Yahoo News Search includes blogs. See http://news.search.yahoo.com/

But in addition to the general web search services, a number of newer sites have sprung up specifically around the task of tracking information that appears in blogs. These sites present mentions of your keywords as they happen, making it easy to stay on top of conversations that may be bubbling up. Some key services to watch:

• Technorati: Among the first and most popular services: http://www.technorati.com/
• IceRocket: One of the newer services available: http://www.icerocket.com/
• BlogPulse: Intelliseek service with business features: http://www.blogpulse.com/

Any of these tools can complement standard web searches, and again, you'll want to track results from each service using an XML Feed. It's easy to combine the results of all these feeds into one continuous stream, and then check that source for updates once or twice a day to get a feel for the blog conversations that are taking place.

Of course, this does take some time investment. If you're looking for a more complete analysis of the information that's being presented but don't have the time or resources to do it yourself, you'll want to engage a professional services organization that can monitor blogs. These services can follow blogs, looking for topics that pertain to your company, and alert you to any issues or concerns that arise.

Engage a professional services organization that monitors blogs

If you decide that monitoring blogs is important enough and time-consuming enough to warrant dedicated resources, there are a number of professional services organizations which perform this service for businesses.

Companies which offer community tracking, sentiment tracking, online monitoring, or brand management services are often integrating blog tracking into their existing products. But if your vendors don't provide this service yet, or you don't already engage a vendor for these services, it's easy to review a few of the more prominent providers today.

• Intelliseek: Creators of the BlogPulse service mentioned above, Intelliseek (http://www.intelliseek.com/) has merged with Nielsen's BuzzMetrics service and has integrated blog tracking with its overall media tracking services.
• Cymfony: Cymfony (http://www.cymfony.com/) focuses on tracking and monitoring consumer-generated media and is partnered with PubSub, mentioned above, for providing analysis of blog content.

There are, of course, many additional providers of these types of services, and many of the consultants and professionals who deploy blogs also offer services to help track and monitor conversations that take place in blogs. You may also wish to use these services as a starting point for developing your own in-house blog tracking practices.

How do I know which bloggers matter?

Once you've figured out that bloggers' conversations about your company matter, you'll want to begin cultivating relationships with the bloggers that influence and affect your industry. You'll need to figure out which bloggers are key to your industry, and then engage them in a conversation that (hopefully!) wins them over to seeing your company as valuable. The key here is to be of service to the bloggers in your community, and in return these bloggers will be a resource you can call upon in the future, if needed.

Identify related topics

A key thing to note as you start reaching out to the blogosphere is that you may have to look a bit outside of your usual areas of expertise. For some niche businesses, or in areas such as finance, heavy industry, manufacturing, or defense technologies, it's possible that general bloggers don't really discuss your business at all. As a result, you'll want to discover which topics bloggers are talking about that can impact your business even if your company name isn't mentioned.

For example, if your company is involved in supplying raw materials, you may wish to look for news and discussions about the manufacturers that purchase your products, as well as others involved in your supply chain. That way, even if bloggers aren't discussing your own products, you can anticipate how blog conversations could impact your business.

Know who doesn't count

There's just no nice way to put it - some bloggers, even though they may have a lot of readers or traffic, just aren't relevant to your business. If you sell yarn to knitters, a technology blogger who has 50,000 readers might say something really good or really bad about your product, but it might not make a difference regardless.

That's not to say popular bloggers are bad people, or that you shouldn't be nice to them, but if someone makes a generic list of "blogs you oughtta be reading", you should take it with a grain of salt. It's easy for someone who's influential with one audience to think that they're influential with all audiences, but it ain't necessarily so. Prioritize your conversations with the bloggers who matter in your niche.

Next: All About Feeds