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08.11.09 Use Monitoring Tools To See What Others Think About Your Business  By
Rich Brooks Hopefully you've never had that sickening feeling when you self-Google and the top result is someone slamming your company, your brand or yourself. And now it's even more challenging as conversations about your company are taking place at a variety of social media sites--such as Facebook or Twitter--that don't necessarily rank well at Google, but can still influence your potential customers. There are plenty of Web sites, applications and companies that will help you monitor and manage your online reputation…for a fee. Let's talk about what you can do for little to no cost. Note: when I talk about "company keywords" below I mean your company name, your brands, your personnel and yourself. How to Monitor Your Online Reputation There are dozens-if not hundreds-of online reputation tools, many with overlapping features. Here are a few good places to start: • Google.com - Since many potential customers will Google your business, it's important to see what they see. If you have a Google account, make sure you're logged out so you see results that haven't been colored by your previous searches. • Search.Twitter.com - This is a real time search of what people are discussing at Twitter. Just plug in your company keywords to see what people are saying about you. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed of the results. • Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts - Get blog posts, news stories and more emailed to you that contain company keywords. Discussion Forums - If there are some popular discussion forums where your audience can be found, it's important to at least monitor conversations going on there by performing the occasional search. • Yelp, TripAdvisor and similar sites - Many people post their experiences with restaurants, hotels, and even doctors and plumbers to sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor. Find out what sites are popular in your industry and see what people are saying about you.
How to Manage Your Online Reputation I want to be absolutely clear that this next section isn't about how to obfuscate your online reputation; if you're doing a really bad job out there, nothing in the next section is going to save your bacon. You should skip down to the third bullet in How to Improve Your Online Reputation below. One of the best things you can do to manage people's first impression of you is by "owning" the first page in Google for your company keywords, pushing negative feedback to page two or beyond. Here's how: • Search engine optimize your site. You should rank well for your company name unless 1) you have the world's most generic company name, or 2) your Web developer didn't know the first thing about SEO. Make sure you rank well for all your company keywords. • Start/Build up your company blog. A blog will help with search, reputation, establishing your expertise and more. It also allows people to get to know you better, which can build loyalty and diminish animosity. In addition, a blog can take up more of those "page one" search engine results. • Get involved in a wide variety of social media sites. Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Plaxo. These social media sites and others can all help bolster your site's search engine visibility and take up additional page one results. • Post videos to YouTube. Google loves YouTube videos and often places them as page one results. How to Improve Your Online Reputation Continue reading this article.
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