As a business or brand wanting to engage their current or potential customers online, it could be easy to feel a bit overwhelmed by the pace of technological development and the speed at which new applications and social networking tools are released. 

But unless your target audience are very early adopter types, you really don’t need to be active in new online spaces or with new tools until your customers, stakeholders or key influencers actually turn up there.  Its like buying a poster site on a new road that doesn’t have much traffic yet.

Any reputable online PR, reputation building and engagement specialist will have specialist software to hand to identify and track online activity that references your brand.  Which makes it easy to work out where people are talking about you and which sites or software they are currently using.  The skill of the online specialist is then in advising their client of the most appropriate way in which to respond to this and how to engage your audience in this particular online space.

So, for now, it looks like many brands should forget panicking about FriendFeed or worrying about google wave– and concentrate on engaging their customers where they are already hanging out online.

posted by gemmaT