MappingTheWeb //

Yesterday, buzz monitoring firm Umbria annnounced the launch of a new service, Umbria Connect, that provides blog lists to companies looking to connect with individual bloggers. The lists are tailored for specific niche topics and areas of interest. This facilitates conversation and discussions between the client company and bloggers.

Umbria gathers publicly available data, information, and input to locate individual bloggers who may be of interest to a given client. Subsequently, Umbria sells these blog URLs in blocks of 25 on a subscription basis. Lists are updated on a monthly or quarterly basis to provide the most accurate picture of the current blog landscape.

According to Umbria, the monthly list of bloggers are created based on the client’s selection of age and gender. In other words, Umbria is not only targeting by niche topic, but also based on more narrow demographic information.

These bloggers may become a client’s:

• evangelist
• product test market
• PR team

I am a big advocate of blog marketing  and targeting specific niche groups, therefore I see huge value with such a service. The elimination of time and hassle cannot be overstated. If indeed the lists are accurate and highly targeted (which I do not know), then the advantages of this service are obvious. However, an automated system cannot be trusted without major scrutiny, as the blogosphere is extremely dynamic and perpetually-changing. If upon further analysis the Umbria Connect tool is able to connect clients with the appropriate blogs, then this may be a big hit.

Otherwise, simply type your ‘niche topic’ into Technorati and start researching.