Evaluate evaluate

There is a very good case for re-visiting Consumer Discussion Monitoring and evaluation.

To begin with we need to find out where all this stuff is and we need to examine the range of processes that are available.
Is there a case for building a PR monitoring and evaluation wiki?

It is relatively easy to monitor Usenet. Netpinions® 2.0 is an automated monitoring bot covering 95,000+ consumer-generated media sites to monitor word-of-mouth in message boards, forums, discussion groups and Usenet news groups. The same company ( CyberAlert) also monitors the blogosphere with BlogSquirrel. Other vendors in this area include Technorati; PubSub; Bloglines and Blogpulse from Intelliseek plus Google's Blog Search.
Then there are the search engines:
Feedster
PubSub
Technorati
IceRocket
Gada.be
One would also use RSS feeds to monitor seraches and sites using tool like:
Lektora (we have almost fixed the Firefox 1.5 compatibility issue ... I have a Windows version available if you'd like to test it)
Bloglines

Trevor Cook has made his ‘Monitoring the Blogosphere’ PowerPoint presentation available for download.
The next problem is finding out exactly what the content is. It will include text and hyperlink references to sources.


Lets start with text…..

The text in every post does need a bit of sorting. Is the mention of your organisation ‘in passing’ or integral to the context? Is the content in context going to ‘move the needle? What are the implication of content for the wider culture in which the organisation has its being?

You can read all the posts but the numbers are huge. Alternatively you can use many of the natural language software developments to do the donkey work.
( even I have one of these).

It is helpful to have information to create maps that point to influential (and Onalytica is helpfully transparent about the methodology) sources. You can use the same data to identify the most significant concepts (e.g. what is the 'top news' of the day) which is helpful if you have a lot of posts to read.
John Wagner (On Message) has a post about monitoring blogs Use PR Sense when monitoring blogs. He pointed out, rightly, that not every comment merits a response. The monetisation of search is an interesting debate.
Benefits. The Washington Post had a front page article providing two examples of companies that have paid attention to customers' online comments and made good business decisions as a result.
And as soon as we have mastered all this there is The New Internet to worry about.
There is so much that it is now beyond blogging and it need the 'wisdom of crowds'


Picture: Monitor lizard