If you are marketing your business or yourself online, you most certainly have been hit by information overload. From daily email management, to blogs and comments, to managing your social media profiles, there is a just a lot of information to manage in order to make sure your reputation and your brand’s reputation remain positive.
There are many different tools you can use to streamline the tracking of your online reputation. Here are four I use every day that help me stay on top of it all.
Google Alerts
You are probably already familiar with Google Alerts for tracking your name and your business name. I also use it to track all mentions of my domain names, my email addresses, and keywords that apply to my niche. It’s also a great way to keep an eye on your competition.
I have most of my alerts set to send me a notification as-it-happens to keep me in the loop and give me a chance to respond quickly, when necessary.
Hootsuite
I use Hootsuite to schedule the bulk of my posting on Twitter and Facebook, but it’s also a great app for tracking your reputation. I have streams set up to track lists and specific keywords so I can see at-a-glance the activity that involves my name and brand.
Nutshellmail
Is anyone else irritated by how difficult it is to see who is retweeting your content on Twitter? Unless they use the old-school retweet format (really a mention, not an actual RT), you may never know who took time to share your links. This is one of the reasons I love Nutshellmail.
Not only does Nutshellmail keep me in the loop with all of my daily social media activity, but I can see who retweets me, and again using my domain names as keywords, I can see who is sharing my content, even if they don’t mention my Twitter names in their posts.
Reputation.com
For serious online reputation management, I use the big guns — Reputation.com. They take care of a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to tracking my online reputation and ensuring that the information out there is accurate and positive. It’s also a great tool for managing your online privacy and security.
The best part? It’s “do it, and forget it” which is perfect for those of us struggling to stay on top of very busy schedules.
What tools do you use to manage your online reputation?
Great Post.
Simple and powerful ways to protect what is most important, your reputation and brand. I call it listening to the all the conversations in a very big room.
People may be absolutely amazed with the amount of “innocent comments and posts” that are visible in a search engine drill downs. Monitoring your name, business and brand is essential for any small business owner. That irate customer could become an organic post on you.
Thanks for your comment, Bill. I always recommend that people make it common practice to Google themselves on a regular basis to stay on top of the results. They’re often surprised what shows up!
Thanks for the post!
Individuals and Companies alike need to be more diligent than ever monitoring their name and brand. Reputations can be damaged by a single incident which goes viral; staying on top of online activity is the only opportunity one may have to avert a potentially damaging event.
That’s exactly it, Zan. It only takes one bad situation that spirals out of control. Very important to stay on top if it, no matter what your brand is.
Managing your personal brand is critical whether you are employed, or self-employed. Kudos for sharing these tools Alyssa!
I use Google Alerts to monitor mentions about me personally, as well as by URLs. I track the RSS feed for each Google Alert within Google Reader instead of receiving my alerts via email.
I just started using Hootsuite, but I really need to figure out how to set it up properly. The way I am using it right now is no differently than just using the Twitter website. Sigh.
Thanks for the lead on Nutshellmail. Definitely going to check that one out!
Love the idea of the RSS feed for your Alerts, Marshall! Might have to try that…
It works out pretty well and definitely cuts down on the number of emails one receives. Just increases the number of things coming across my RSS feed. :)
Hi Alyssa,
I’m using Google Alerts and you can also enhance them with a service called YoLink. It seems to catch twice as many mentions. I can’t function without HootSuite! I have 2 twitter accounts and a Facebook page connected and more tabs and streams than you can imagine LOL!
I’m checking out Nutshellmail now, thanks to you! It’s always cool to find a new tool to play with. Thank you!
I haven’t heard of YoLink, Ileane. Will be checking it out!
I use hootsuite and then I use klout to watch and see how I’m doing.
Honestly , I never thought of using google alerts! I use them for other things.
What a good idea.
I use G alerts and Hootsuite but I haven’t heard of Nutshellmail before, but it seems like a really useful tool.
I place of Hootsuite, I use Seesmic and used to use TweetDeck, as I love their platforms. I hear great things about Hootsuite, however, I love my desktop application (Seesmic).
LOVE Google Alerts – can’t live without it!
The other I haven’t heard of and will definitely be using them! I also use http://www.socialmention.com which is an amazing reputation management tool that sends me an email each time a certain keyword that I specify, is mentioned. Kind of like Google Alerts, but a lot more narrowed down to social platforms.
Social Mention sounds useful, Morgan. I just tried to create an alert, but it said alerts are currently disabled. I will be checking back on it soon though!
Aw, that’s unfortunate! I suppose now that I think about it, I have been having some problems with them lately, so I wonder if they’re just reconfiguring their backend. Hope it works soon! It’s a great service. (by the way, sorry for my many typos in my previous reply! Whew!)
I am using Hootsuite but you know, scheduling is not that much intuitive.
Have you tried buffer.com? It is much easier.
For me, I always prefer to update my Facebook manually. Maybe I am old fashioned, but, it gives me good feeling.
Great read. Thank! Online reputation management is a tough one. You basically just gota rank more than 10+pages to push off the bad ones.
Hi Alyssa,
Thank for sharing that great post. I am definitely gonna test out some. My question would be I guess, How would you get suggest as the alternative to getting a website indexed?
Adit released an application that’s really good with helping manage your reputation online as well called Pozative.
Excellent read!! Online reputation is a major factor these days because everyone looks at reviews and makes buying decisions based upon your company’s reputation. I use Google Alerts to stay on top of things.
Thanks for the article!