As I see it, the potential of blogging as a negative force hurting your product sales is actually greater than its potential as a positive force spurring sales.

A case in point: In 2006, Dell determined that 48% of the comments posted about the company online were negative.

To combat this bad blogosphere PR, Dell started a corporate blog, set up a blog monitoring program, and began to do outreach to bloggers.

Two years later, the percentage of blog posts that were negative about Dell had dropped to a little over 20%.

If I were a major consumer brand, I would have someone in the organization monitor what bloggers are saying about the products — and reach out to them to correct any factual errors or misconceptions.

Do you think that would work?

Or would it fail because (a) some bloggers have a chip on their shoulder while others (b) would view it as manipulative and violating netiquette?