Market Sentinel quoted in Sunday Times

Mark Rogers of Market Sentinel is quoted in Dominic Rushe’s piece on corporate blogging.

Companies also fear what their employees might say and that corporate blogs will attract special-interest groups keen to attack a corporation.

“Corporations being corporations there is a lot of fear about doing something for the first time,” said Mark Rogers, chief executive of Market Sentinel, a company specialising in corporate reputations on the web. “This has led to a weird situation where companies are not punching their weight online.”

Rogers said that 75% of car buyers now searched online before they went ahead with making a purchase. “If companies don’t figure out what is going to turn up online when they make those searches, they are going to have a problem.”

A corporate blog is a way of redressing the balance. Most companies have more “authority” about their brand than a blogger, said Rogers. But if a company is failing to communicate with its customers online, the opportunity is there for someone else to fill that gap — and the company may not like what they have to say. …