• International Herald Tribune, Monday, October 16, 2006 12:15 PM

As marketers become aware that a review from an influential blogger can make or break a product introduction, many are starting to include blogs in their marketing plans. By the official launch time, a product may already have been slipped into the hands of bloggers several months before. Feedback from their online discussions with other devotees can help inform a marketer's subsequent advertising and media strategy.

Says Peter Hirshberg, chief executive of Technorati, a blog-tracking service, a year ago companies balked--now they see bloggers as an opportunity.

Edelman Public Relations, which monitors scores of blogs devoted to following individual clients of the firm, is extending its blog-tracking abilities by sponsoring development of new Technorati sites in French, German, Italian, Korean and Chinese. The companies say the European- and Asian-language services are particularly necessary because finding bloggers who write about brands and products can be more difficult in these regions than in the United States.

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