Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation Online
Working with an SEO agency or consultant is a great way to get your website to rank higher in the search results for your selected key terms. They have the experience and knowledge to be able to find out how well your site is currently doing, carry out optimisation techniques, and increase your company’s visibility online. This process obviously brings its own rewards; traffic and conversions being the main two, but it’s also important to keep an eye on the reputation of your brand as well.
If your brand is higher up in the results then more attention will be given to you. That means your susceptible to both praise and criticism a great deal more; in some cases, if the criticism is too much, it could tarnish your reputation. Therefore, you should always look to see how your customers are viewing your services, or making sure you don’t have any negative PR which can be significantly damaging. In any case, negative reviews or press won’t do your site any favours when it comes to either your rankings or your reputation. So how do you monitor your brand?
Google Alerts
If you subscribe to receive alerts through Google then you will be notified when your chosen phrase is mentioned on the Internet. For example, if you were the owner of a local coffee shop then setting up an alert using the phrase ‘Carl’s Coffee shop’ or whatever your business is called, would give you notifications for all the times you are mentioned on the Internet from that point onwards. This is a simple yet effective way to monitor what is being said about your company and respond if anything negative is mentioned.
You can change the setting so that you are notified every time you are mentioned or so that you receive notifications on a weekly basis. You can also set to monitor everything on the Internet or select blogs, news, video, and other categories so that you are more specific. These notifications will go straight to your chosen email address.
Me on the Web
This Google tool also allows you to monitor your online reputation and features on the Google dashboard. You can receive notifications for your company name, email address and telephone number among other terms and although it is similar to Google alerts, it’s an easier way to manage your notifications. Using Webmaster Tools you can also request for information to be taken down on the results pages if you believe it is not relevant, which comes in handy if you believe someone has set about to ridicule you or say disparaging things for no apparent reason.
Search plus your World and quotation marks
Logging into Search plus your World will bring up more personalised results pages for your searches. As a result, you can use this to look for key terms relating to your business. If you also search within quotation marks, so to use the earlier example “Carl’s Coffee shop”, this will give you more defined results. You can then indicate where your reviews are, where your social mentions come from and this allows you to build your customers by adding them to your social profiles as well. If you monitor your brand, you can also grow your brand at the same time. You will need to be logged into Google and have an account for this to take effect, but it doesn’t take long to set one up.
TweetDeck
Another great application is to search on Twitter what people are saying about you. This has been made possible through TweetDeck that allows you to set up searches for your brand name. From here you can see who is saying what, and when they said it. This way you can respond accordingly to help manage the situation. A lot of brand monitoring is to help you manage your brand, so that what people are saying doesn’t end up being too damaging.
Concluding thoughts
Obviously all of the above services are a quick and easy way to monitor your brand, but if you want to protect your brand as a result of negative feedback or events, then you can always use an SEO agency or consultant. Many agencies offer brand monitoring and protection packages so that if, in the unfortunate event, you receive negative comments, your brand can still maintain a decent ranking and high level of exposure for the right reasons, drawing away any attention to the negative issue at hand.
These are just some of the ways in which you can monitor and protect your brand online. However it’s better to have these in place sooner rather than later, so that you don’t pay the price in the results pages in the long run.
