If you've ever written about a corporation and then watched your blog stats you'll know what I am talking about. You write a question or a comment about a company, we'll call it ACME Co., and then watch as during the day users from ACME visit your blog and check things out, never leaving a comment. (See Finding Hidden Gems in your Stats)
A friend relayed a similar story to me last week. They had asked a specific question about a service and then saw close to 30 unique visitors from the company read their blog. Any official contact from the company? Nope.
In some ways it's the equivalent of calling somebody and then hanging up. Hello....we have CallerID (they're called stats), we know it was you...how come you didn't want to talk?
It's a conundrum for many corporations, they'll look but won't touch. From my experience they just don't know what to do. Who is authorized to comment on behalf of the company? We're not allowed to visit blogs at work....Aren't all bloggers out for corporate destruction? etc.....
That poses the question. What's worse:
1. A company not tracking blogs that mention them
2. Repeatedly visiting a blog but never contacting the blogger
The quick answer is #1 since just listening to customers is a major step for many organizations. However, if a company keeps up the practice of visiting but not commenting it might cause the blogger to call them out. Last year the McDonald's fan blog McChonicles welcomed visitors from Burger King and McDonald's corporate. Basically he said, "We see you out there...."
Visitor Comments
I trashed a company that failed to honor a warranty - this must have been almost 18 months ago. I still get three or four visits a day from ppl Googling the name of the company.
The point here is I know people from the company visit my site - I see them in the server logs. Imagine now if they just owned up to the problem directly to me instead of quick visits once a week to confirm.. yep the post is still there.
Now if they ever decide to come right out and address my points directly instead of skulking about, I'll write about it and give them the props they would deserve, making the old, bad, post.. vanish.
But no, someone in their PR or legal department is probably telling them to ignore me. I'm just a blogger.
Posted by: David Parmet | August 28, 2006 9:50 PM
Josh,
Hang up calls! So true.
I have noticed the same thing. I mentioned some negative customer experiences about several companies last year and added a comment about a bad experience with a company, geico that was a non-customer bad expereince.
Interestingly, Geico followed up. I got an email asking me if I would mind explaining exactly what had happened.
I think though for the most part the blog monitoring is seen as an "end in it itself strategy" and companies have not thought about setting a "what do I do with the information" strategy.
It may seem like an obvious step to a blogger who is used to reading and commenting but not so to a compartmentalized company. The Geico guy was a marketing guy who was working on a specific project. The blog monitoring is probably a different department...information gathering, not communication.
Maianne
Posted by: marianne richmond | August 29, 2006 2:05 AM
When I had my run-in with Bacon's last year, their people pretty much lived on my site for a week. If you followed the incident, you'll remember they never commented to my posts.
What's funny is that, every few weeks, I get a sudden rush in traffic from Bacon's. I can only imagine some new minion over there runs across the original posts & sends out an all-company email.
Posted by: Allan Jenkins | August 29, 2006 7:16 AM
I think you also have to consider the context of how you mentioned the company. If your post is negative, they are much more likely to respond. Months ago I wrote a post about a company after being contacted by a rep from that company. The post was glowingly positive of the company. Then a few weeks ago, myself and a few other bloggers were mentioning this rep and their company on our blogs. My mentions were positive, but one of my friends left a post questioning one of the company's actions.
I noticed that a rep from the company found my blog post by doing a google search for the rep's name, but didn't comment. Then about 10 mins later, the rep DID comment on the post that my friend left, where my friend questioned the company's actions.
So obviously, this rep was googling their own name, and if they found any 'negative' posts, they were replying.
Posted by: Mack Collier | August 29, 2006 10:00 PM