Investigating social media and blogs is becoming an ever more important area for research, with tools already in place by Comscore, O&M via Technorati and Buzzlogic. Now comes another development, this time by market researchers Umbria. They investigate consumer generated media (CGM) to provide clients with a subscription based blog measurement tool called MediaSense Blog Measurement that attempts to assess the impact of online consumer conversations on their brands.

The system lets client follow the effect of a press release and monitor how conversations about it wax and wane, including measurements of conversation tones and participant’s demographics.

Howard Kaushansky, president of Umbria, tells us:

“Bloggers are thought leaders and opinion-shapers, so tracking who and how quickly they pick up on various news items has become critical for brand and PR professionals, if it’s positive, you want to know. If it’s a mushroom cloud of negativity, you definitely need to know.”

His CEO, Janet Eden-Harris, continues:

“Companies spend enormous energy and effort trying to get messages out to their markets, and historically, the only way to measure the success has been to track how many articles are written as a result. This new service is a breakthrough in focusing on the consumer discussions that are generated. Is it being discussed? If so, is it positive? What demographic groups are talking the most?”

It’s easy to see how a bit of algorithm trickery can generate a great deal of useful information on how effective PR is online. These metrics are bringing PR into an interesting new sphere. We’ve always known that the benefit of great PR is in the way it can get a brand talked about. Up to now, the measurements in traditional media have been limited to measurements of airtime and column inches. With these new tools, we open up a new world of data which may well deliver PR a higher share of the marketing budget in the future.