Reputation management online is a huge deal these days. It's so important to keep up with your brand, to know what's being said about you, how you are being perceived as a professional, as an entrepreneur, as a person.
Why? Because how others perceive you determines how they will interact with you. Your job is to eliminate any potential barriers that keep your message of service to the world from being shared.
But how do you do that? What does it take to monitor your brand online? The good news is - it doesn't require that you invest in some high cost tool (unless you are a larger company and you have lots of information to mine). If you are a smaller business, or a solopreneur there are some affordable and even free ways to create your own "listening board".
What is a listening board
A listening board is a dashboard of sorts. Its a way to keep track of what's being said, how often, and what sentiment - i.e. positive, negative, neutral is out there on specific topics, or even people.
How do you create one
Basically, you put together keywords and phrases (including your name, name of your company, common words you use in your content, etc) into a search system and let it email/text you with results when it finds something.
Here is one very straightforward, simple way you can start a listening board. There are others as well but this can be done literally in about 5 minutes.
- List out keywords and phrases as I mentioned already that might be used to find you online
- Go to Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
- Select what type of alert you want to monitor (i.e. videos, blog posts)
- Determine how often you want to see it
- Click Submit
Wa-la, you now have alerts coming to you so that you don't have to constantly search online to find out where you are being referenced. Now again, there are other much more savvy ways to get this done. In fact, my team even does it for some of my small business clients. But if you're looking for quick and free? This is one way to tackle it.
Hot tip: if you're using a mail system that allows you to filter email, set up a folder or label to pull all your alerts to one place so you don't have to swim through your mailbox to view them.
Impacting the way the world sees you is far easier than you might expect. By taking specific actions, you can manage your online brand reputation and create a consistent brand and image that bridges both the online and offline world. Crafting your message and delivering it to the world online is just another component of marketing. It truly is one of the most important business strategies you can use.
WANT TO RE-POST THIS ARTICLE ON YOUR BLOG OR USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE, E-NEWSLETTER OR WEB SITE? You may, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
About the Author: Tanya Smith is a creative business strategist and coach specializing in showing service based solo entrepreneurs how to simplify, save time & stand out with simple but transformational strategies that engage more quality leads and clients. Her company Be Promotable provides fresh actionable strategies and virtual resources to promote business owners as power players in their market. For instant access to your free 7 secrets to online time management report, visit us at: www.tanyasmithonline.com.
Comments