Always Listen to Your Blogger

Everyone is very familiar with the saying, "always listen to your mother". In my case, that advice has always tended to come in handy. Therefore, I am extending the same advice to companies, with a slight twist on words. Just as important it is for one to listen to their mother, it is important for companies to listen to bloggers.
As of Jan. 2008, 120 newspapers have gone out of business (sm lecture notes). Less and less people are watching the news and more and more people are turning to online sources. The blogosphere has had an incredible launch in the last year with thousands of people blogging on an array of topics. Recently, I started to realize how much of the content bloggers wrote about concerned businesses and were reviews about their products and services. And, why should this concern businesses? Well, bloggers are part of something called social media (if you are reading this, then you are all too familiar with what social media is). Reminded by my social media prof., social implies interaction. It is for this very reason that companies should listen to bloggers.
If there is negative press about a company (not social media), the press only reaches the people who watch a certain news channel or read a certain magazine. Most of the time, companies are able to get a wind of news stories and interject the bad press. Companies keep close relations with journalists which also help them track certain news stories and come up with a crisis response, the instant it is needed. The blogosphere is different. Once a story is posted, it can be reached by millions of people in a number of seconds. The story is free and available to anyone who can get granted access to the internet. If something negative is written about a company, then that news is picked up by another blogger. This blogger also spreads the news or the news is spread by a person who reads the blog and then posts in on another social media site for someone else to read. Again, social implies interaction. In a matter of second, negativity about an organization is moving through the internet and reaching millions like wildfire.
With that being said, I think it is essential for a company to hire a team of people dedicated to tracking and responding to what is said in the blogosphere. This way negative press does not have the ability to spread across the internet and if it does, a company is aware of it and able to respond immediately. Furthermore, if a company is not aware of what is being said, then they are not able to respond. This could look like ignorance. On the other hand, if a company is aware and responds, then they look active and are given an advantage over other companies. And that is why companies should listen to bloggers.