Online Reputation Monitoring worth £60 Million in 2008

E-consultancy’s latest addition to its research, the Online Reputation and Buzz Monitoring Buyer’s Guide, reveals that this sector will grow by 30% in 2008, to an estimated value of £60 million.

The addition of this guide not only demonstrates the accelarated growth of this rapidly developing market, but also shows how the industry has moved on, from a rather fluffy approach to online PR, to quantitative measurement that incorporates analytics, monitoring tools and tangible metrics.

The E-consultancy Guide includes 16 detailed profiles of the leading players in this market: Asomo, Attentio, Brandwatch, CyberAlert, Cymfony, FindAgent, iCrossing, Market Sentinel, Nielsen Online, Onalytica, Radian6, RepuMetrix, Reputica, StrategyEye, Techrigy, Trackur.

Social media has clearly hit the mainstream, and as more companies look to invest in social media marketing, a prerequisite for any brand must be to initially monitor the space and manage their online reputation, before deciding whether to actively engage.

The proliferation of online word-of-mouth, together with the rapid expansion of Web 2.0 technologies means that now, more than ever, organisations need to know what their customers are saying about them.

Although online reputation monitoring is still very much in the early adopter phase, as E-consultancy’s / Lynchpin's 2008 Online Measurement and Strategy Report reveals, a fifth of companies (21%) are already looking at this type of data and a further 37% have plans to analyse this information.

As Giles Palmer of Brandwatch.net explains:

“Online reputation management covers such activities as PR, SEO and online monitoring. There are also the offline monitoring and press clippings markets which are very closely related.”

It's clear that the whole host of new media channels now available to consumers means that quite simply, for the organisations involved, there is "nowhere to hide".

Chris Reed, a director and head of the digital and social media team at reputation management agency, Fishburn Hedges, said that companies cannot afford to neglect their online brand management.

“Reputations are increasingly going to be determined online - whatever sector you’re in. So an analysis of what people are saying (or thinking, even?) about your own or a competitor’s brand is going to be an essential part of any future communications strategy.”