Five Free Tools to Monitor Your Online Reputation
Building a solid reputation for any company takes time, effort and elaborate strategy, but all that hard work can easily be undone in just a few hours. Negativity spreads like water on a grease fire, especially in an online environment that’s open 24/7, and any online content – whether it’s positive or negative – impacts how people view your business. In fact, a recent study from eMarketer.com found that 83% of consumers say online reviews influence their perceptions of companies and 80% reported that negative online comments changed their purchasing decision.
Clearly it’s important to monitor your company’s online reputation on a daily basis, so to make the task a little easier, here are five free tools of which every company should be aware.
1. Watch Industry Websites
If This Then That (IFTTT) automates simple online tasks by using one of the most basic principles: If this happens, then do that. IFTTT lets you set up rules (called recipes) for everything from getting the latest weather updates as a text message to automatically sending Instagram photos to Twitter (or any other platform). It has both fun and professional applications. You create a recipe by choosing a trigger channel (the “if this happens” part) and an action channel (the “then do that” part).
To monitor what people are saying about your company, set up a recipe that scans RSS feeds of important industry websites, then sends you a daily email alert with the results—IF [website] mentions your company, THEN receive an email alert.
2. Track Employee Mentions
Google’s Me on the Web tool notifies you when personal data appears on the web. It’s handy if you want to monitor mentions about certain company employees or senior staff. Me on the Web is simple to use, but you do need an existing Google account.
To set up an alert, click “Stay current with web alerts,” type your search term(s) in the text box and click Add. You can set up as many search terms as you like and you can choose how often to receive alerts for each term.
3. Filter Instant Social Searches
If you want to instantly search blogs, Twitter and Facebook for specific terms, IceRocket is the tool for you. IceRocket doesn’t require an account and is easy to use. Just type your term(s) in the search box and choose the channel you want to search: blogs, Twitter, Facebook or search all.
4. Find Influencer Opinions
Topsy is a powerful Twitter search tool (more powerful than Twitter’s native search). Use Topsy to find key influencers related to your industry and company, as well as sentiment scores over a period of time. It’s important to monitor influencers to see what they’re saying about you specifically or your industry in general. Type a topic (or your keywords) in the search box and click the Influencers tab in the left menu.
Use all of Topsy’s options (i.e., social search, social analytics and social trends) to keep up with what’s being said about you, your competitors and any general discussion around your industry.
5. Search for Sentiment
Social Mention returns results based on the sentiment of social media buzz around your company. You can monitor multiple websites in one place and even find out which keywords people use when talking about your company. Social Mention has a number of real-time search tools and a useful statistics sidebar. The statistics include sentiment, top keywords, top users, top hashtags, last mention and more.
To make monitoring even easier and less time-consuming, set up an RSS feed search or email alert by clicking the related icon on the right sidebar.
Since monitoring your company’s online reputation is a daily task, you want to be sure to promptly address any issues that arise. Never ignore negative messages or opinions and always respond in a professional manner. Remember, the negative comment will never go away, but neither will your smart, positive reply.
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