Reach out to bloggers who are writing about your company

Yesterday I published a story about paying bloggers to write about your company. But how to you manage all the others who are already writing about your products and services? The short answer is you can't. You can however, learn from what they have to say. You don't need a lot of software or equipment, just free tools that are there on the web.

Set up Google Alerts and Technorati Watchlists for your company, your products and your executives. These will notify you of any new online chatter about these subjects.

Become familiar with del.icio.us, the shared bookmarking site owned by Yahoo. Read teh tages and comments members are applying to your company's name. You may find the terms they use to describe you aren't what you expected. You'll also find fans and critics there.

Reach out to bloggers who are writing positively and negatively about your company. Ask what you can do better. Deputize them as an extension of your R&D operation.

Once you get comfortable listening to unvarnished feedback, leverage social media tools to ask for help. Set up a wiki, post your marketing collateral and invite business partners to comment. Offer a prize for the best ideas.

Engage a service like Communispace to create private communities where you can engage with partners and customers in an honest, ongooing dialogue. If your product ahs a computer component, consider opening up the code so customers can "hack" their own new ideas.

Search for Google Maps Mania to see incredible examples of how customers have extended Google's brand - adn its advertising business - by building hundreds of web services on top of its map service.

Your best product and marketing consultants may be out there right now, for free, waiting to help you. All you need to do is let them.