Some weeks ago I blogged about the fact that it is difficult to find the Honda blog. Weirdly, we noticed that this expression (”Honda blog”) remains one of the most popular keyword for the Market Sentinel blog. The reason is to be found here in the Google search. Even though the blog itself is now in the top 100, and even at number 3, (see below) our post about the difficulties of finding it, remains at number two. A lot of the people searching on “Honda blog”, we notice, are Honda’s competitors. We hope they learn Honda’s lesson. The subordination of “Honda” to “2talkabout” in the branding has made this blog hard to find.

A few weeks back there was a big fanfare about Honda blogging - so we were intrigued to see where they had got to. The answer is that they are hard to find in the Google search Honda blog. Not in the top 100, although there are plenty of references to them from other bloggers including luminaries like Pete Blackshaw.

An Alexa graph for the blog

shows a certain amount of traffic on launch.

The puzzle is solved by looking a Google search for 2talkabout, the company that launched the blog. They are right there at the top of the search. The Honda brand is subordinated to theirs. By promoting 2talkabout so heavily, the company seems to be standing in the way of Honda drivers finding the blog.

Neville Hobson reports on Firefox’s advertising campaign. User made commercials for the product and Firefox gave the best one a prize. The winners are here.

This campaign works on so many levels.

• It involves customer endorsement;
  
• It makes use of the customer’s understanding of the product - what they see as value (often different to what the marketeers might choose to stress);
  
• The campaign leverages the power of online endorsement, building Google ranking for Firefox.
  

Last night at the Mandrake Club I heard Simon Gulliford, ex-marketing director of Barclays Bank UK talking about how he make a Honda dealership a success. One notion to offer older drivers who were willing to demonstrate a model a £200 discount on their next car for every sale they achieved. One guy got 46 sales for them in a year. Not only was this cheaper than incentivising a salesman, it carried more weight.

Tomorrow I am on the blogging4business panel in London and talking on the topic of “what blogs are saying about your business”.

So what are blogs saying about your business? In the US, where blogging has become a widespread phenomenon, blogger Eric Mattson has just demonstrated in an anecdotal survey that top US companies are much discussed. [Hat tip to John Cass of Backbone media for the link]

The UK situation is different. Athough the last few months has witnessed a huge growth in the use of community sites like mySpace, the majority of bloggers are either hard-core early adopters, or younger people. That still leaves blogs as a smaller scale phenomenon in the UK than in the US as far as most brands are concerned. Pick a UK-focussed brand like John Menzies and the comment count on Technorati is pretty anaemic. 79 comments in the database, and most cut and pasted from online news sources like Reuters and the Scotsman.

The truth is that for most UK industries the bulk of commentary happens in message boards or in other traditional sites. This kind of commentary is technically harder to get at than blog commentary (Technorati won’t be much help) but it’s also less susceptible to infestation by keyword spammers.

Market Sentinel has a number of automotive industry customers and our automotive database is comparatively light on blogs. The majority of these sources are sites which allow customers to review cars, or simply message boards. For the automotive sector at least, blogs are a rather small part of the story thus far.

This is not to say that the automotive industry shouldn’t itself use blogs to communicate with its consumer base - of course it should. And the most enterprising of the online brands are either doing this already or have plans to do so in the near future. But as far as listening is concerned, brands need to spread their nets a little wider than the blogosphere.

[Update] My colleague at our partner Onalytica Flemming Madsen draws attention to a phenomenon which can be made use of in the blogosphere today, and that is something he calls “statistically improbable links” and which we deliver in a branded form as “Stakeholder Spotlight”. That is to say - what urls are disproportionately linked to by the stakeholders in a particular topic? We have found this to be a fascinating predictor of trends and an early indication of problems. Flemming has identified that the Vodafone stakeholders are highlighting a blogger who has a complaint about data charges. For other Market Sentinel customers we have found that this functionality throws up interesting links to companies that might be considered acquisition targets, with the stakeholder group serving almost as a focus group of what might be considered cool and interesting on the web.

Two new UK business blogs launched this week, one for Honda and one for Guinness. The context of course is about building brand, but the two blogs are very different in style and content.

The Honda blog, which launched yesterday, encourages Honda enthusiasts to register and share the blog. It’s hosted by 2TalkAbout, which is “a new, independent blog network that lets consumers talk about their favourite topics, products and brands. Honda is the first brand that has decided to join the 2TalkAbout network from the start.” Those adding comments can also give each post a star rating. It’s a novel approach to developing the use of blogs and it will be interesting to watch its success. For myself, I’m not sure I’ll be wanting to read about Honda owners asking other Honda owners whether anyone knows anything about the engine specs for the Type R.

The Guinness blog looks as sumptuous as the product it represents. Posts are made by a variety of members of the Guinness team and range (so far) from how the last Guinness ad was made to musings on St Patrick’s Day. The blog states its purpose as an attempt by the business to let the Guinness team and Guinness drinkers communicate more closely. There are a couple of minor glitches (the home button takes you back to the registration page and the permalinks look a bit scary), but overall I’m guessing Guinness fans will love it, and it ticks the right boxes for what this kind of blog should be: open, transparent, honest, relevant, oh - and interesting.