Monitor Your Company's Brand and Your Online Reputation
Be the First to Know If You've Given Them Something to Talk About
In this era of the highly competitive Internet marketplace, it's important to stay finely tuned into any online chatter about your business. Any good business owner knows the value of "word of mouth." Positive "word of mouth" is one of the top avenues for business growth.
For this reason, it's critical that you know what your customers are saying across the Internet. Who's talking about your brand? Who's linking to your website? For continued business growth, it's critical that you maintain a pipeline into your brand's online audience and reputation.
Here are a few FREE and easy tools that will help you keep tabs on your business's name online:
Alerts: Google Alerts and Yahoo! Alerts let you set up regular alerts on your company name, personal name, products or any other keywords. You'll get an email alert, in whatever frequency you choose, when you get a mention on the web.
- Find out when someone links to your website. Set up a Google Alert like this: link:http://yourcompanywebsite.com.
- Monitor your competitors with Alerts.
There are several other more specialized online tools that work similarly to Alerts but may provide results beyond those of Google and Yahoo! Many of them allow you to sign up for feeds of your top searches too:
- Serph: Includes results from social media sites like Delicious and Digg.
- Technorati: Monitors chatter in the blogosphere.
- Boardtracker: Tracks threads in forums.
- Linqia: Searches online communities and groups.
- Yahoo Pipes: Helps you create a "pipeline" that collects and allows you to manipulate information, from across the web; this tool bodes a little more technical than the others.
If you're a service provider, you may also check out the customer reviews on Yelp.com and Citysearch.com. Not only can you read what customers are saying about your business, but you can also register with the sites in order to customize your business listing and interact with reviewers and other potential customers.
It's impossible to control every small thing a person says about your business. However, with tools like these ones, you can take charge of your brand. Know how your brand is being received, know who's buying, find out what they love about your product or service and what's working, and, most importantly, be the first to know if something isn't getting a positive response.
Sure, no news is often times good news, but you might also enjoy watching your customer base grow and change, and you might enjoy the compliments that get generated here and there. And above all, you'll be informed. Never again will you be the last to know what everyone is talking about - especially when it comes to your company and your brand.
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