A new study about blogging and the media by Columbia University and Euro RSCG Magnet says that more than half of journalists use blogs to discover, research and report their stories. It’s official: blogs now wield enormous influence on the creation of news and shaping of corporate reputations.
 
Chances are your company’s reputation is being shaped by bloggers without your knowledge as we speak. There are no journalistic rules in the blogosphere, and information can spread like SARS among bloggers eager to break news and incestuously cross-link postings.
 
So how can you see what people are saying about your company…or your new product launch…or your competitors…in the frenetic, free-flow world of blogs? In three easy steps with a couple of free Web services, you can easily set up an automated monitoring tool that continuously scours the blogosphere for discussions about your company – or any topic of your choosing – with the bloggers’ musings delivered right to your desktop.
 
Here’s how:
 
Step 1.) Install a free RSS reader.
RSS readers or “aggregators” monitor syndicated newsfeeds and stories on blogs and Web pages, and display updated articles they find. RSS feeds are now common on most blogs and major new Web sites (click here for more information about RSS). You can choose from dozens of free RSS readers, available as either a stand-alone application, or as a Web page, or even integrated into your e-mail program. I like stand-alone RSS readers like SharpReader for Windows PCs or NetNewsWire for Macs.  Bloglines is a good one if you prefer the Web.
 

A fully-loaded SharpReader RSS reader
 
Step 2.) Sign up for and personalize at least three free Blog search engines
Web services such as Technorati, Intelliseek’s BlogPulse and Feedster are like Google-for-blogs. They serve as real-time search engines that keep track of what’s being talked about in the blogosphere. BlogPulse, for example, has already indexed more than 13 million blogs, and is adding about 5,000 new blogs to its search index daily. 

PR Newswire and Bacon’s (Media Map) Media Source also offer blog monitoring for paying clients, but on a much smaller scale of the blogosphere.  

The blog search engines are great for ad hoc blog searches, but even more powerful when personalized and integrated with an RSS reader. Each service enables you to set up customized watchlists using keywords and phrases you wish to monitor. Create as many watchlists as you want. I recommend subscribing to a minimum of three blog search engines because they tend to yield different results. Best to cover as many bases as you can.
 
 
Creating a customized watchlist example
 
Step 3.) Pump your watchlists into your RSS reader
The watchlists you create within the blog search engines are also encapsulated as RSS feeds. They’re typically presented as point-and-clickable button links like this  or this. Simply copy each watchlist link into your RSS reader and subscribe to it, and you’re done. You’ll be on blog monitoring autopilot from that moment on.
 
Your new tools will automatically receive notification from weblogs as soon as they are updated. The search engines track the thousands of updates per hour that occur in the blogosphere, and monitor the communities (who's linking to whom) underlying these conversations. You’ll be able to see and react to the conversations shaping your company’s reputation the near-instant they transpire. And because RSS readers enable you to consume vast amounts of news and conversations in seconds, you can quickly discern meaningful, qualitative patterns about your company in the blogosphere.
 
-Steve Hodgdon, SVP, Strategic Services