Online conversations: Are your ears buzzing?

• Online conversations: Are your ears buzzing?
  Well, they should be. Whether you know it or not, there is a conversation occurring about you, your company and products right now. Customers, vendors and partners are sharing opinions and perceptions. Bloggers, journalists and other influentials are watching, commenting and most importantly, influencing. And often these perceptions, which may be critical, is exactly what search engines are looking for.
  Welcome to the world of high impact, consumer-generated media, where anyone can use a simple publishing tool to connect directly with like-minded people.
  A brand for most people is an experience that creates an impression. Brand and corporate reputation leads to conversations that creates a perception. And isn’t perception really what we are looking at specially in this digital world?
  As part of our digital initiative, brand managers and corporate communication strategies must scoure public, online discussion areas - including blogs, newsgroups, social media, and more - to capture, understand and report the issues, opinions and ideas that costumers share between and among themselves. Understanding these conversations is critically important to:
  Understanding brand and product perceptions and reputations
  Over time these conversations might provide early warning systems regarding brand or product issues
  Responding in real time to customers' concerns
  Gleaning intelligence for communication and product strategies. This is probably a research tool that advertising agencies would absolutely love to have!
  Understanding the most influential portals as well as influencers for your company, brand and product
  Measuring and validating effectiveness of communication and advertising efforts
  Narrowing down on allies and prospecting for evangelists
  Over time this detailed mining of all the buzz is probably an essential step for all of us in understanding conversations and developing a strategy of influence.