Kate, from One Degree, asks the question “When Should You Ignore the Blogosphere?

Every company should be monitoring the blogoshpere (internet) for their brand and the potential negative reactions that users are posting about. The viral effect of Blogging can quickly spread ill news about your company. You’ll also find juicy golden nuggets of praise from gracious users or your products spreading how are happily spreading news about their experiences.

Here is a great example of a company listening to the blogoshpere; Direct2Dell. Dell monitors for blog reactions to their policies and products and then uses these to build a (mostly) positive experience for their users/brand. They also build a dialogue with their readers and this is becoming ever more important in the interactive Marketing channels, taking what could have been a PR nightmare and using the attention to correct the wrong facts and respond to some of the criticism or inaccurate fats in the original post, from the Consumerist.

More companies should be doing this on a regular basis. Email and blogging allow for a real conversation between brand and consumers. This type or brand monitoring has also sparked several niche companies, that will monitor on your behalf and let you know if you need to address something negative.