Google Alerts
alerts”>Alerts can be very valuable to monitoring your online presence, addressing consumer concerns and keeping up with your niche or industry. All you need to do is choose a keyword or phrase to set up an alert for. You can choose the option to receive alerts instantly or daily.
Start off with setting up alerts for:
- Your name (full name and nicknames)
- Your business name
- Your social network handles
- Your blog
- Your products or services
You can also use alerts to keep up with your niche and its key leaders. Some things to think about monitoring with alerts:
- Keywords and phrases in your niche
- Names of important people at competing organizations
- Names of people you want to get to know
Twitter mentions and search
Setting up a column on Twitter, Tweetdeck or HootSuite for mentions of your handle will allow you to quickly respond to praise, comments and concerns.
Don’t forget to follow important keywords and hashtags, too. Set up a separate column for niche keywords, phrases and your most used hashtags to follow the conversation. That way, if someone on Twitter needs advice, expertise or recommendations about something in your niche, you can be one of the first to respond to them.
Trackbacks on your blog
If someone links to one of your blog posts, tweets it, etc. it should show up in your trackbacks. You can see what they wrote about, why they linked to your post and thank them for mentioning your piece.
Keep in mind that each way you monitor your brand you’re listening to feedback from your audience and others in your niche. While not everything you read will be praise, don’t discount negative feedback right away. Think about how you can incorporate suggestions and concerns and address it right away for the best results.
All of these tactics will allow you to:
- Stay on top of what people are saying about you, your brand, your organization, etc.
- Keep up with trends in your industry/niche
- Get new ideas and inspiration for blog posts
- Be one of the first to read new posts by influential people (and leave a valuable comment, if you choose to do so)
- Build up a list of sites that you can possibly guest blog for
