It’s a new baseball season and on the field, it is common to hear chants of “hey, batter, batter, batter”.  
And because of online chatter, it’s now a whole new ballgame for marketers too. 

Driven by the growth of the blogosphere, discussion forums and social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook, “online chatter” is an entirely new media category defined not by marketers, but by consumers!

Online chatter, also known as Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) or User Generated Content (UGC), are posts made by consumers on publicly available blogs, discussion forums, Wikipedia sites and video sharing sites.

CGM is growing at a rapid pace.  By the year 2012, in the U.S. there will be 130 million users of CGM and 94 million users will create content.  62% of consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet and 8 in 10 consumers who read reviews say the reviews have affected their purchasing decision.

CGM is here to stay and is becoming more influential by the day. Consumers are more adept in actively seeking out what other online consumers are saying, and they are trusting content from online consumers who post on blogs and discussion forums.

Marketers Must Think Differently
Some experts are saying that the proliferation of CGM has added a fifth P, participation, to the original 4 P’s of marketing (product, price, place and promotion).  Brands are trying to crack the code of how to delicately participate in the online conversation as well as monitor their own brands and categories for marketing insights.

It’s no secret that consumers trust other consumers who have a relevant experience with a brand, product or service more than they trust advertising coming from the brand.  Consumers who post reviews rarely have an agenda other than warning about or recommending products, services or brands based on their own experiences. Bloggers frequently mention brand names as they write their thoughts and experiences for the world to read.

Tools to Help Marketers Measure the Chatter
With CGM, advertisers can gain unprecedented insights into what online consumers are saying.  Tools such as Empower’s proprietary ChatterWatch^SM tool help advertisers by measuring and analyzing CGM on blogs and discussion forums.  Unlike traditional marketing research, there is no sample or questionnaire, just pure, unsolicited consumer feedback.  The power of these consumer insights can drive changes in many elements of the marketing mix. Tools like ChatterWatch^SM can uncover marketing insights by doing the following:

• Identifying the key themes, topics and associated sentiment relative to a brand.
• Identifying the influential blogs and discussion forums where online consumers are talking, as well as how widespread the discussion is online.
• Allowing clients to understand whether their media plans are affecting the amount of online discussion.
• Identifying strategies to help leverage CGM and other forms of media.
• Allowing clients to understand how to utilize the positive buzz and limit the impact of negative buzz.

To see if measuring and analyzing online chatter can help you develop a game-winning strategy to market your products, contact your Empower Client Strategist.

By:  Michael Lamontagne, Digital Analytics and Search Strategist
       Julie Pahutski, Senior Vice President KII
       Jim Price, Vice President Media Innovation