What if something negative was posted online about you or your business, but you were so busy working, you didn’t have time to respond to it before it could inflict damage on your reputation? Worse yet, what if you weren’t aware of the post at all? For example, I can’t count the number of times a recent college graduate was fired or simply failed an interview because the HR gatekeepers found disturbing photos posted on social media of a spring break trip.
In the information era, you need to manage the digital footprint and reputation of your business, but what’s the best way to about doing that? There are so many platforms to monitor between your website and any social media sites in which you market it can induce a headache. So, let’s take a look at the best ways to keep your eye on what people are saying about online to promote a clean and healthy reputation.
Trackur
Trackur is, unfortunately, a paid service, but it does have a free trial. The prices are a little high, and starts at $97 dollars a month, which includes up to 50 tracked keywords and email/RSS alerts. The premium versions add features such as custom feeds, profile grouping, unlimited client logins, and full white labeling, so you can make the interface match your brand. The dashboard is well laid out and displays information in a clean and easily readable manner, though it’s not as sleek as it could be.
After entering in a keyword that you wish to track, it will populate data regarding how many new posts have been created around that keyword, as well as links to the posts, how influential they are, the date posted, and on which platform the post was made. Though it may not be ideal for small businesses who have a tight marketing budget, medium-small and medium-sized businesses who post frequently online will see value in this service.
Social Mention
Social Mention, like Trackur, monitors a vast array of social media sites. Currently, Social Mention tracks approximately 80 different platforms, though it’s reasonable to assume the number of platforms monitored will expand as new social media platforms are launched. And guess what the best part about Social Mention is? It’s completely free to use! Additionally, it’s incredibly simple to use, too.
The interface contains a single search bar in which to enter a keyword, as well as a drop-down menu that allows you to refine search criteria with tags like Blogs, Microblogs, Bookmarks, Images, Videos, and more. Then, after you have entered a search term, not only will it show you links to the results mentioning the keyword you entered, but it will also rate your keyword by strength, sentiments, passion, and reach, to help quantify the popularity of your term.
Google Alerts
If a competing blog has been throwing shade your way, you can use Google Alerts to monitor their site for any unfavorable comments, claims, and posts regarding your business. For that matter, you can use Google Alerts to track any other number of key terms regarding your business, name, or brand. You do need to have a Gmail account, however, since it uses your Gmail profile to send the alerts.
After entering in a keyword, it will show you an alerts preview. You can also refine your search and alert settings, and set the alerts to as-it-happens, at most once a day, and at most once a week. Furthermore, you can filter the alerts by region, language, number of results, and sources (blogs, news, web, etc.). It’s another great free alternative that will help you keep your finger on the pulse of reviews and posts regarding your business.
Likealyzer
Likealyzer is a great tool, which is wonderfully free to use, and was designed specifically for Facebook. Basically, it can run through some tests pretty darn quickly which will then rate a Facebook account (be it an individual or business page) to see how likable it is. However, the metrics delve deeper than simply retrieving the number of likes an account has.
It can run through and judge the activity, engagement, responses, and pageviews of the Front page and About page. It can also help identify weaknesses with the account, such as post length, the account’s frequency of reaching out and engaging with other accounts, and whether or not followers can post content. It can even offer suggestions, such as “Should improve how often they post content.
Twitonomy
As the name implies, Twitonomy is a tool specifically designed to track data on Twitter. To unlock the full range of features, unfortunately, users have to sign up for the paid version. However, there is good news: Twitonomy does offer some Twitter metrics and data for free, similar to a ‘lite’ version. It’s not too expensive though, and at just $19 per month is easily affordable for even small businesses.
This tool will break down tons of data for analysis, including information about your lists, followers, competitor’s Twitter handles, metrics regarding user engagement, hashtag tracking, real-time trends, and more. Even though some of the aforementioned tools analyze Twitter among several other platforms, Twitonomy has the advantage of being specialized just for Twitter.
Final Thoughts
It pays to track what followers and competitors are saying about you online. Using these tools can help mine data that shows how well your reputation is holding up, and how well your content is performing. If you thought the only way to judge content performance was by ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ on Facebook, think again. Even if you don’t want to pay for a premium service, you can, at the very least, use a free service to see what people are saying about your business.
will-hanke
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