Even though I really hate the term “buzz” to describe some of the stuff we do in public relations, I have to admit I recently tripped over a few decent resources about blogging as a trend (which unfortunately refer to PR as “buzz”). While I’ll be introducing some of my students (the ones farther ahead in their sequence) to more depth about blogging, I’m also generally introducing my introductory (“Fundamentals”) students to the concepts of it.

That said, The Washington Post featured a great article in March of this year about how the food company, ConAgra, circumvented the potential of waning sales after the low-carb craze started to sputter out by monitoring what they called “blog buzz,” or the chatter being generated on blogs all over the world.

At the same time, this article also turned me on to something called Nielsen Buzzmetrics. You remember Nielsen…the company that puts those little devices in only-so-many homes to measure who is watching what and when, etc.? They now have an entire division devoted to quantifying (essentially, through content analysis…I’m assuming) the chatter being generated about various companies and topics on blogs and other individual communications mediums. Mouthpiece is the blog written by Nielsen Buzzmetrics CEO, as he constantly discusses how consumer-driven media is evolving.