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Last spring Carman Pirie questioned a decision by Dell Inc. to sell its computers through Wal-Mart and wrote about it on his blog.

"It struck me that their direct sales model was their key for success," said the 33-year-old principal with Colour, one of Atlantic Canada's largest integrated marketing and communications firms.

Pirie didn't think selling machines through Wal-Mart was a smart strategy and he wasn't shy about sharing his thoughts.

"It was some pretty direct armchair quarterbacking on my part."

What he didn't expect was a reply from a representative from the company in the form of a comment on his post.

"Within a couple of hours of posting "¦ I got a response from Richard at Dell," said Pirie.

Richard, said Pirie, went into a great deal of detail about why Dell was working with Wal-Mart and what the computer firm was looking to do.

"Here's Dell, based in Round Rock, Texas, interacting with a blogger in Halifax, Nova Scotia "¦ within a three hour window," he said. "If you mention Dell within your blog in any kind of way that deserves a response, you're going to get a response with a couple of hours."

Pirie said while Richard's comments didn't totally sway his view of Dell's strategy, he was impressed with the rapid response from the company and posted his own reply to Richard's writings.

Pirie's experience with Dell highlights a growing trend in corporate communications - the rise in the importance of social media as a two-way communications channel between consumers and businesses.

Social media can be broadly categorized as blogs, social networking sites, as well as Internet discussion boards - places where individuals gather to discuss points of common interest or express their thoughts and ideas on the web.

Pirie is no stranger to social media.

In addition to being an avid blogger, Twitter and Facebook user, he's also part of Colour's social media practice.

Colour has partnered with Fredericton-based technology firm Radian6, a maker of social media monitoring software, to provide clients with services that help them understand the impact of social media on their businesses.

Colour also helps its clients seize on the power of social media to market their brands, products or services.

One campaign Colour implemented for Killam Properties Inc., called Landlord Lou, combined a slick website, amusing YouTube videos, a fictitious Facebook profile as well as a sink plunger collection contest to build university and college student awareness of, and interest in, Killam's apartment properties in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Social media, said the marketing and public relations expert, is having an ever-increasing impact on firms.

"In Western Europe for instance, 25 per cent of all people who are on the Internet are actively reviewing or commenting about consumer products online," he said. "That's a huge statistic."

Pirie said a friend of his who also works with social media uses a phrase called MAIL (which stands for monitor, analyze, interact and lead) to describe the different ways businesses are using social media.

While how a firm approaches social media in terms of monitoring, analyzing, interacting or leading conversations depends on its size and markets, all businesses big or small should be aware of the influence of blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and discussion boards, he said.

David Alston, vice-president of marketing for Radian6, said his company's software monitors what is being said on various social media sites so that companies and public relations firms can know what's on people's minds and respond.

Radian6's social media monitoring product has been on the market since 2007.

Clients include major Canadian and American public relations and marketing firms as well as companies within Atlantic Canada such as Moosehead Breweries Limited and Bell Aliant.

"In the past, the web page for a company might have been considered the homepage for a brand," he said. "If you think about it now, when searching Google and you search for that brand or that brand category, that's really in a new way the new homepage for a company," he said.

Alston used 3M's Duck Tape as an example.

"If there were 10 results on that (Google) page, number 10 would be 3M.

But the nine above it would be social media, blog posts, consumer sites, videos, all kinds of stuff," he said.

Interacting with users through social media is the next evolution in consumer relations for firms, he said "If you think about someone who blogs or tweets or posts a picture, 99 per cent of the time the reason they're doing that is they want to be heard. They want to share their opinion, they want to share their ideas," he said.

Alston compared posting on social media to someone standing in front of a company's downtown office with a megaphone.

"If someone was doing that "¦ you know within minutes someone is going to be down there talking to a person saying 'How can I help you', 'Is there anything I can do'," he said.

"Companies really need to be listening for that and engaging people right away."