WebProNews

During one of the early sessions from the Word of Mouth Marketing conference, Idil Kakim from Burson Marsteller asked the panelists whether companies needed to address every single comment/question that comes in on their blogs.

The responses were diverse.

Jonathan Carson from NielsenBuzzmetrics said idea of having a conversation doesn't scale; it's more about participating in a culture of conversation.

Taking similar tone, Jim Nail from Cymfony said that if your blog generates a few comments, you should respond. However, when you get into the big numbers it becomes far more difficult. He suggests analyzing the common themes and then responding to them with a blog post or - and this last point was interesting - through traditional PR channels.

I am in Jim's corner. It's very hard to respond to every comment that comes into a blog from customers when the volume is high. However, the tricky part is that consumers may have the expectation that you will.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.