It’s been said that ignorance is bliss. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially when your online reputation is at stake. Celebrities, rock stars, and businesses have one thing in common…they often obtain professional reputation managers. These consultants ensure that no one has soiled their clients’ good name through daily tracking of search engines and news results. Every day they google their clients’ name, looking for copyright infringement on a trademarked name or image, and attempt to manage any negative press they might find.
You could do the same yourself, if you had all day, every day to search for your company name. Fortunately, there is a better way. These free tools allow you to go about your day with the knowledge that if your company name pops up on a blog, comment, or discussion board, you’ll be (almost) the first to know. That really is bliss.
Google Alerts
http://www.google.com/alerts
You could enter search terms into Google News or Google Blog Search, but Google Alerts does the searching for you and sends you email updates of results that are relevant to your choice of topic. Enter in your own name, company name, product name, or whatever you want to track and get the most current results instantly.
Technorati
http:/www.technorati.com Technorati tracks blog posts and tagged social media on the web, with searchable and real time results. Setting up an account is free. Once you do, “Your Watchlist” allows you to enter subjects or website URLs you are interested in monitoring. Technorati will email you when your search terms appear.
Co.mments.com
http://co.mments.com
What if you do find a conversation taking place about your company or products? Co.mments.com is a bookmarklet that you drag and drop into your browser bookmarks/favorites folder. When you find a conversation you want to follow, bookmark it, and get automatic updates when something new is added.
Blogpulse’s “Conversation Tracker”
http://www.blogpulse.com/tools.html Conversation Tracker tracks the threads of posts and links that emanate from blogs when people comment on or link to posts. Enter in a search term, a link to a post, a specific URL, or a link to a news article and Conservation Tracker returns all the conversations related to that specific original or “seed” item. You have to do this search yourself, but all of the results are in one place for you to see.
Del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us Online bookmarking services such as del.icio.us allow people to share their bookmarks online. You can benefit from other people’s usage of this social service by receiving customized RSS feeds that allow you to track whenever someone bookmarks a web page that includes mention of your company.
Keotag
http://keotag.com This tool is so simple. Just enter a search term and click the icon of whatever search engine you want to look on, from Google to NewsVine to YouTube. Results that include your search term as a tag are automatically displayed, and you don’t even have to create an account.
Boardtracker
http://boardtracker.com Boardtracker tracks thousands of forums and discussion boards, and that’s all. If any new discussions take place that include your pre-defined terms, Boardtracker will alert you.
Posted on September 30th, 2007 by Vanessa
Filed under: Marketing and Promotion
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