BuzzLogic: Finding the Buzz

Today I had the chance to speak with the executive team at BuzzLogic, an early stage tech company that tracks “buzz” around topics or companies. Buzz is defined by the company as any chatter throughout the blogosphere that can have influence on consumer behavior.

The idea is that pinpointing the thought leaders or influencers around a given topic allows marketers to home in on those sources in their marketing strategies. Think of it sort of like a form of BuzzMetrics that has been productized as a software license.

The product itself is a web based application and service layer that targets PR firms and brands of all sizes that wish to pinpoint where these conversations are happening. The resulting activity can involve joining a blog comment thread or positioning paid advertisements near the conversations or top “influencers” in a given area.

There were some interesting tools shown in the demo I was given, such as a graphical representation of all of the inbound and outbound links to the top blog posts on a given subject. This is meant to show marketers from an “overhead” view, where conversations are happening and where they should position themselves.

This could have some nice tie-ins to the work flow of existing SEM products. Given the geographical and site targeting options available in with many SEM platforms like Yahoo! panama, BuzzLogic could supplement them as a first step to determine where targeting should occur. A future version of BuzzLogic’s product will in fact be able to drill down (via IP address) to see where conversations are originating geographically in addition to their web domain. It’s early days to see what kind of value this could add to search marketing, but the possibilities can begin to be extrapolated.