Thanks to a partnership between Edelman and Technorati, the blogosphere is about to become more relevant than it has ever been for our multinational clients. The two companies have formed a relationship that enables the monitoring of blogs in five different languages. As a result, we will be able to help clients protect their corporate reputations while garnering valuable insight into what bloggers around the world are saying about our clients.
My colleague, Steve Rubel, who writes the popular blog, Micropersuasion, must be downright giddy over this news. Imagine being the only company in the world that will be able to do blog searches in French, Italian, German, Chinese and Korean! The blogosphere has become one of the most relevant forms of communication on the planet. Now, this new capability takes it one step further. Starting in the third quarter, Edelman staff will be able to monitor what is being said about clients around the world. Since we have hundreds of clients with mutinational operations, what's being said in languages other than English is of particular relevance.
Did you know that two-thirds of the 40-million+ blogs are not in English? In addition to returning blog results in the user's native language, the sites will break out the top 100 blogs in each language. Now we'll not only be able to determine who's saying what, but how influential the blogger is, as measured by inbound links.
Why do people like Richard Edleman, Phil Gomes, Steve Rubel and I get so excited about this? Because we understand the enormous value this will help us bring our clients. Already, Edelman has done pioneering work on behalf of clients such as Xbox and Wal-Mart. That's one reason Edelman recently announced the formation of a new practice called the me2revolution specifically to understand, generate and participate in conversations in emerging channels.
This announcement has the potential to revolutionize the way we practice the profession of public relations. The implications for crisis communications alone is mind-boggling. I can hardly wait to see how this new capability will affect the speed and completeness of how we make PR relevant for current and future clients.