These days, your reputation can be boosted or destroyed in just 140 characters.
As you make the transition online and increase your brand presence on social networking sites, your name becomes increasingly important to protect. Luckily, there are ways to track and measure what people are saying about you and how well your brand is performing on the social web.
To get started, you need to first discover who is talking about you (both as an individual and a branded advisor) and then listen to what they have to say. This will allow you to learn, collaborate and engage with the people that can help contribute to growing your social web presence.
We've selected the top five free tools you can use to easily monitor your name and brand on the web and social networking sites with just a few clicks.
1.
Use if: You have lots of followers (300+), multiple social media accounts, and lots of conversations on the go.
2.
Use if: You think your name might be mentioned on a website, you want to monitor industry news or you want to track competitor activity.
3.
Use if: You use social media frequently and regularly engage in conversations, or your business has a large presence online.
4.
Use if: You want to cover all the bases (as there will be some overlap if you use all of these social media tools). Also good to use if you want to build natural looking links that will increase your search engine rankings.
5.
Use if: You don’t want to be sent email notifications, and would rather search for the content manually whenever you want.
There are plenty of other tools out there, and which ones you use will depend on your objectives and the amount of time you have.
In addition to listening and joining conversations, you'll also want to measure your brand performance. While monitoring was all about managing your brand reputation, measuring your brand is all about metrics and statistics.
Measurement tools will help you understand what needs to be done in order to stay on top of the social media trends, how you can make your product more attractive to potential clients and how well you are benchmarking against your competitors. Tools like
If you keep an honest and transparent approach when assessing your social media presence, you will likely turn the social web into a virtual asset for your business. Remember, your ability to respond quickly to negative comments and benchmark your success over time is vital and should be a top priority when defining your social media strategy.
Ms. Craveiro works in the Online Marketing department at
