Steve Rubel, in his blog Micro Persuasion, highlights a method he uses (titled the "Conversation Gap") to show brands the missed opportunity that exists by either not managing or actively supporting blog efforts. Via an IceRocket's Trend Tool, one can provide the keyword of a product/service and then a corresponding brand and see graphically all of the blog posts where a specific brand is not mentioned and the ones where it is. Rubel uses the gap that exists between the two to highlight where brands are missing out on opportunities to engage in blog based conversations.
For example, using this method Motorola would be able to gage how many blog posts occur each day that mention J2ME (a java platform installed in most of their mobile phones) and that do and do not mention Motorola.
The resulting graph (click to enlarge) shows that over a three month period, Motorola only was mentioned in 120 of the 1,921 posts about J2ME. This enables Motorola to see that it is missing the opportunity to be included in approximately 28 conversations per day (less spam blogs). One way to close this gap is for them blog more aggressively about the topic.
Props need to go out to Niall Cook and Hill & Knowlton, who came up with a more intuitive input method into IceRockets Trend Tool. I would urge those who are interested in running their own "Conversation Gap" queries to check it out.
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