I know, you’ve got a lot going on. You’re busy getting the message out about your business, and probably also working to keep your clients and customers satisfied. How are you supposed to find the time to keep up with what others are saying about you online?
First of all, no excuses; you DO need to keep up with what others are saying about you online. Google is keeping up. Their new Hummingbird algorithm is paying attention to what others are saying and using that to rank how well your content gets found. You need to know what’s happening out there too.
Second, if you’re using social media, you’ve entered into a conversation. It’s not OK to just check out and not respond when others are talking to you. That’s not a good idea when you meet customers or potential customers in person, and it’s not going to work on social media either.
Third, I’m not giving you a pass because there are online tools to help you keep tabs on your brand. Let’s talk tools. Here are three that I like.
1. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is one of those online tools that I just love. Why would you Google yourself when you could ask Google to do it automatically for you and send you an email whenever you pop up online? It’s brilliant. Google knows what’s happening online, so when you set up an alert, it does just that; alerts you when it sees your keyword pop up online. If someone mentions you in their blog; Google will send you an email to let you know about it. Google alerts are really easy to set up and you can have multiple alerts going at once. Best part? It’s free!
2. Social Mention
Social Mention provides a real-time search of user generated content. That means it’s scanning for the keyword you enter in blogs, Facebook updates, tweets, LinkedIn posts, bookmarks, videos. It “searches content across the universe,” so this tool goes off-planet, even.
What’s more, Social Mention can tell you the sentiment behind the mentions and allows you to filter by positive, neutral and negative mentions. Other metrics provided include passion or how likely those talking about your brand will do it more than once, the reach of those mentions and average number of mentions per day.
3. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social media analytic tool that helps you keep track of multiple social media channels in one place, sometimes called a social media dashboard. The Sprout Social tool also provides you with great analytics so you can track how engaging your content is, how far your reach, account growth and more. Sprout Social allows you to publish posts to your different social channels, so you only need to log in one place.
Now that you know about these tools, you should be ready to keep tabs on your brand online. In fact, I recommend that you also use them to keep tabs on your competition. Keep up; get ahead!
What did I miss? What are your favorite tools for keeping up on your brand?
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