Blackshaw's new book, "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today's Consumer-Driven World," discusses the impact of consumers' new freedom to blow off steam about bad service or deficient products. Consumer generated media, he argues, is a force that businesses in general and PR practitioners specifically need to reckon with seriously. Since consumers trust other consumers above companies or brands, a company's success depends on its credibility and its ability to gain the trust and support of Web-savvy, outspoken and influential customers. In the book, using tales of mass consumer advocacy and the power of bloggers and ordinary Joes with an Internet connection, Blackshaw advises executives on how to build credibility into their businesses through blogs, Web sites and video postings. We grabbed Blackshaw to get his take on the role of PR professionals in harnessing—or at least responding to—this new consumer power.

Social media have been around for several years now. How well do companies understand their potential impact on sales and reputation?

The fastest growing media is that which consumers create and share among themselves. It's TIVO-resistant and presents long-lasting sources of influence. Increasingly, companies are recognizing that this is a very big deal. Many learn the hard way, as bad customer experiences, amplified online, can both impact sales and erode brand reputation.

Thanks to the proliferation of word of mouth and consumer-generated media (www.clickz.com/experts/brand/cmo/article.php/3515576 (CGM)), we are becoming a consumer-controlled surveillance culture. There's no question consumers aggressively monitor marketers and brands. They take notes, share them with others, and increase leverage by gathering, "remixing (www.clickz.com/experts/brand/emkt_strat/article.php/3574721), and pooling brand intelligence." For many marketers, this reverse-surveillance is a humbling, destabilizing, and sobering reality.

In which online venues or channels are consumers having the greatest impact on businesses?

The venues continue to expand, so the answer will always change. That said, the most venues with impact are the ones with the greatest potential to unleash a "network effect." Blogs also have great impact because of the way other bloggers or consumers link or subscribe to them. Blogs also index extraordinarily well in search results, which in turn increases exposure and "media impressions" against the commentary.

Consumer-generated multi-media, or what I sometimes refer to as CGM2, also has high impact, and we see this repeatedly with high-impact, often high-exposure YouTube videos. As I outline several times in my book, video makes for very compelling viral content. And because video allows the consumer to document good or bad news with a much higher order of persuasion, it can have a huge impact.

How well do companies respond to online attacks on them by consumers?

Companies are in the very early stages of figuring this out, and PR professionals can play a huge role in providing a responsible, consumer-centered roadmap. This is more art than science, but there are many steps brands can take to both insulate and protect themselves both before and after an attack. In the book, for example, I talk extensively about the largely untapped potential of the brand Website as a first line of defense. Most brand Websites remained impenetrably inflexible, and lack the agility and flexibility to address issues in real time. When in double, consumer and other key influencers - even Wikipedia editors for that matter - will default to the brand Website for guidance and perspective. In many cases, they are left totally disappointed. Search engines either don't exist or fire back blanks on really obvious queries, and getting answers on the most basic of questions can be painfully frustrating. Blogs and social media clearly help, but they can't be too divorced from the core Web infrastructure.

I also encourage companies to really get a handle on their key advocates or enthusiasts. When in trouble, these individuals can quickly become a brand's best defender. The key is to develop processes and profiling approaches that help you identify and segment your best advocates. This is a big focus for me right now at Nielsen.

What are the biggest mistakes companies make when they try to take part in the online conversation about their products or practices?

Companies have limited patience, and they sometimes want results too fast. Inevitably, they get sloppy, and sloppiness leads to embarrassment - public embarrassment. Too many brands want to 'change or influence" the conversation overnight, and it just doesn't work like that. The most important message I dial home in my book is the importance of first establishing credibility. If you stumble into someone else's conversation sans credibility, you are just asking for public humiliation.

Get smart first. Focus on listening first.

What role should public relations be playing in these online conversations with consumers?

I work with PR firms all the time, and I see a range of activity. In some cases, I've seen PR firms architect the entire brand social media strategy, in other cases I've seen them play a key role in supporting and executing against an already agreed upon plan.

Here's how I think about it. Historically, PR has been all about managing 'influencers,' and that typically included media, government, celebrities, and "credentialed' experts. Now we have consumer-influencers entering the scene, with more leverage and control than ever before, and it makes logical sense for PR to simply expand it's net to accommodate those influencers. But along the way, I think, PR will need to redefine its role and essence into something fundamentally broader, as social media is softening corporate and agency siloes in a very big way. Traditional ad agencies and digital firms are as equally eager to manage these new "influencers" as they see them as a de facto advertising channel.

Also, to really do this right, I think PR firms are going to have to get much smarter and savvier about the root causes of what drivers buzz and conversation - particularly customer service - and develop practices to help clients get key operations nailed at the source. I worry that too many PR firms are looking for that "viral hit" when they should be trying to figure out how to REALLY fix the issue that consistently drives the most negative buzz for bands: service. I acknowledge this is difficult, because the incentives are not always aligned to nurture that level of long term thinking.

Should companies be merely reactive to conversations that occur, or should they be proactive about stirring up conversations?

There's an acceptable zone of being practice, and I suggest some order of conservatism in the early stages. Build better Web sites than can "sense and respond" to key issues as they come up. Test social media tools like blogs or online communities in the brand's backyard. Perhaps open a twitter account and get some learning with real-time customer support or dialogue. Things like that.

Words like "stirring up" conversations make me nervous. Inevitably, brands get back buzz for stirring up the pot too much. You are far better off having smart strategies to get "new news" to your opt-in key influencers.

What role can a corporate blog play in moderating the online conversation about a company?

If executed properly, blogs can play a great role, and I outline over a dozen great examples in the book, from Patagonia to Sun Microsystems. I don't want to overstate the value of blogs as a "solve all" panacea, but they do help large and small companies establish a meaningful beachhead into a whole new way of thinking about how to interact with consumers, customers, or users.

How will consumer-generated conversations change the way we do business in the future?

It's already changing the way we do business. Companies may not admit this overtly, but I don't think there's a CEO on the planet that doesn't lose some level of sleep over the prospect of bad news hitting search results, or YouTube, or even Wikipedia. All of this is creating an entirely new accountability standard, and yes, it absolutely will change the way companies do business. I predict, for instance, that listening processes will become a powerful new source of competitive advantage for companies. Companies need better radar, and without radar to detect the conversational blips on the map, and the direction in which they are headed, you just can't fly the company plane. We're now in an environment where the "blips" are everywhere - and in hundreds of forms: text, audio, video, instant message, and more.

How should corporate communicators prepare for this future?

Honestly, I think the PR industry needs a fundamentally new strategy. Your industry has a much bigger role to play, and because you historically have been externally focused, you are in a unique role to create new value for clients. That strategy needs to take a much more thoughtful view of what really drives word-of-mouth and conversation - well beyond the sex and sizzle of one-trick pony social media quick hits-- and I think you need to be a strong voice of reason and temperance about what works and what doesn't.

I also predict that "service" truly is the next major phase of marketing, and the PR industry needs to ask whether it sees a bigger role in that strategic matrix for brands. I'm working extensively with consumer affairs and customer service professionals, and they clearly recognized that that "this is their moment" to assume new leadership, and expand the scope of their long-neglected function. PR should be thinking the same way, but they may need to become much more "operation-focused." PR firms need to be able to calculate or forecast the impact of brand reputation -- or level of positive or negative consumer-generated media - from key investments in customer service, employee training, and beyond. Again, what my book is driving home - quite emphatically - is that buzz and conversation, and ultimately brand reputation, emanates most from credible business processes. PR should know every "talk driver" inside and out.

That's a tall order, but an exciting one.