5 Ways to Monitor Your Online Reputation
The explosion of social media use has meant that online reputation management is becoming increasingly important for companies of all sizes; and in certain cases, even important for individual real estate professionals.
Wendy Forsythe wrote about the need to manage your personal brand on the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate blog today that nicely sums up the reasons why.
It’s also a topic I’ve written about extensively on this blog too:
- How Do You Measure Your Reputation?
- Rise in Internet Use Reinforces the Need for a Cohesive Identity Strategy
- The Rise of the User Review
- The Search for Perfect Agent
- Local Search Will Affect Your Business
So, how do you deal with getting started managing your online reputation?
Why not just listen first?
Before you can react to any situation that may occur, you need to be aware of that situation. Here are 5 tools I’ve found to be very useful in tuning in to online conversations.
The granddaddy of reputation management tools. If you don’t have a Google Alert set up for your name already, stop right here and go and set one up.
StepRep emerged into Beta a few weeks ago and it’s like Google Alerts on steroids – it scans not only search results for your name but also many of the more popular social networks.
One nice feature Step Rep provides is it lets you build your reputation by embedding positive reviews or stories about yourself that you’ve found into your web site through a small widget. Promoting stories with good things to say about you or your brand is a good way to build credibility. It reinforces your reputation and reassures your customers.
Ever wonder why many small sites launch with links and logos from media companies smeared all over them? They’re looking to establish that credibility.
Trackur is another full-featured social media monitoring solution that gives you a full dashboard-like environment that helps you keep track of your brand, key individuals and your competitors. Probably overkill for most individuals, it does provide a nice trend analysis for companies wanting to see how often (or not) their brand is mentioned.
BackType is a new service that scans all the comments on blog posts; a place that Google Alerts often neglects. Google may pick up on an original blog post that contains your name but may or may not index the comments on other posts where your name pops up. You can set up an RSS feed or email alert whenever you or your brand is mentioned.
The use of Twitter is a communications case study unto itself (check out the fantastic Twitter for Business series from the Gahlord Dewald on how you can implement Twitter into your business).
But, if you’re not ready to dive in to Twitter just yet, an easy way to stay on top on what’s being said is to plug your name or brand into Twitter’s search tool and keep track of the results. Twitter provides an handy RSS feed for your query which you can pipe into your reader for daily monitoring.
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Make sure to follow Inman News on Twitter too!
Joseph Ferrara.sellsius | Feb 4, 2009 | Reply
I’d highly recommend TweetBeep, which sends you Twitter alerts on your keywords (& twitter name) via email.
http://www.tweetbeep.com/
Andrea West | Feb 5, 2009 | Reply
Great post! I’m really digging the StepRep site and look forward to seeing great things from them this year.
Jeff Tomlin | Feb 5, 2009 | Reply
Hey Joel, thanks for the love. We’ve been getting some great feedback for StepRep so far. The personal search monitoring and results management is only the beginning. There’s a lot you can do to build your reputation. Promoting the positive comments about you and your company is a start and we have that built with StepRep profiles and widgets. But the next part is to really leverage social networks to build a stronger reputation with connections and transparency. We think that social networks can drive real business without sucking all of your time and energy.
Overland Park Real Estate | Feb 6, 2009 | Reply
Google Alerts is also great because I can see how many little league home runs I hit, when I won the lottery, The picture of the 75 pound shark that bit off my finger, etc.
Laura Hale | Feb 8, 2009 | Reply
techrigy.com is a new one that does similar monitoring. It isn’t bad for a new company. It also monitors wikis. You also missed the “hire some one to monitor for you”.
How are those companies monitoring sites like Quizilla, MySpace and FaceBook? Which don’t appear to have good built in search for some things like monitoring message boards and forums and comments?
Chris Dowell | Feb 9, 2009 | Reply
I have been using the twitter tool and google alerts for a while now. I’m excited about using StepRep. I just signed up today.
Mark Madsen | Mar 12, 2009 | Reply
I’ve been using http://www.whostalkin.com for all of the real time social media / bookmarking activity.
Kevin Sandridge | Mar 25, 2009 | Reply
http://www.whostalkin.com is a highly effective and valuable tool for keeping track of your online rep as well as what’s being said on just about any topic across multiple social media networks. I find a new “gem” with almost every search.
By the way – Joe Hall, founder of Whostalkin.com is a super guy. He’s always up for talking SEO and social media – and he definitely has a Pay it Forward – Win Win philosophy about this stuff.