Online reputation management is essential for every business.
When it comes to the corporate world, managing a reputation is even more critical. A large company can have their reputation soiled overnight with one complaint from a customer or client that goes viral. To guard against this, companies need to monitor their reputation using online tools. You can do this yourself or work with a corporate reputation management company.
Here are three useful tools that can help you to easily monitor what is being said about you, and where it is being said. you can receive alerts related to your online presence any time you, your staff or your company are mentioned.
Google Alerts
Google provides a free solution where you can easily track search results based on your own personal queries. These Google Alerts are highly customizable and will be an integral part of every corporate reputation management strategy. Getting started with Google Alerts is simple:
1. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts
2. In the search query text field, place the company name in quotes, “company name.”
3. Adjust the frequency of alerts under the “how often” option. “As-it-happens” is the frequency I use.
4. Under “how many,” choose all results.
5. Now, choose the appropriate e-mail where results will be delivered to under the “Deliver to” option.
6. Once all of the settings are complete, click the “create alert” button.
Google Alerts utilizes the most powerful search engine in the world and is one of the most beneficial services to help with any company’s online reputation management strategies. Google Alerts is the best free tool to use.
Social Mention
Social Mention may not have the ability to send alerts to you at the moment, but it is a great solution for the active monitoring company. By integrating over 100+ social media properties into their results, Social Mention is essential to any reputation management company’s arsenal. The site is also simple to use.
1. Visit http://www.socialmention.com and simply type in your respective company’s name and click “Search.”
2. The next page of results will include activity from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and hundreds of other social media sites.
3. Refining results is easy by changing the “Sort by” and “Results” option.
Social Mention is a quick and easy way to monitor social mentions, complaints and praises. The alerts feature is currently disabled, but when it is working, it is a terrific way to combine social activity all in one place.
MonitorThis
MonitorThis allows 20 different search engines to be searched and placed in an RSS feed all at once. While not aesthetically pleasing, the most popular search engines will have their results aggregated all in one easy to view place – your reader.
1. Visit http://alp-uckan.net/free/monitorthis/ and in the “Search” field enter your company’s name.
2. Click the “Make monitor opml” button.
3. Copy all of the text found in the “Your monitor.opml” textarea.
4. Open notepad or any other text editor.
5. Paste the contents into the text editor and choose save as.
6. Name the file “monitor.opml” and click save.
7. Open your feed reader and import “monitor.opml.”
8. Now, simply view the contents of the search in your reader.
This is a little more technical than other options, but it is a great way to aggregate results from a a large number of important search engines all in one place. The ability to use your own feed reader ensures that content is always up-to-date and easy to access.
Outsourcing Corporate Reputation Management
Not everyone either wants to, or is capable of doing all the work themselves, and there are many companies that will handle it for you. The services they provide vary widely, depending on your needs, as do prices, and you can request quotes to discover what they can do for you, and what the cost might be.
Talking about the effects of damaging information, nuprofile, a Corporate reputation management company, says “No matter what kind of business you’re running, negative listings and comments can do serious damage to your reputation and your business. So many people are searching for your products and services online, that any negative posting may appear prominently on the search engine’s results page. The big problem is that it does not have to be truthful or accurate, but it will still be there for your potential customers to see, 24 hours a day, every day of the year.”
The unfortunate side-effect of the internet leveling the playing field for small players, is that a lot of power is now available to anyone who wants to harm your reputation. These three tools give you a way to monitor what is being said about you or your company online. Companies that specialize in reputation management can monitor for you and also help remove or defuse those slings and arrows.
