Be it individuals or large companies, everyone considers brand management as one of the important tasks in the digital age. And why not – people used to talk about different brands before and the brands never really knew what they were talking about, but things have changed! Today, it is a different world where everything is said right in our faces and brands and individual owners know this harsh reality.
Don’t Ignore Negative Feedback
Usually, companies and brands don’t have control over most of the conversations that happen online and they can either ignore it or observe and participate in it and try to solve existing customer problems, and attract more potential customers. The latter is definitely the smarter choice for building an online reputation and we know that’s a solid fact a positive online reputation helps build trust, sales and trust among customers. Mentioned below are the top 8 free online tools that can help you in managing your brand’s online reputation.
- Google Alerts: Via RSS or email, subscribe Google Alerts about your brand name is the first thing you should do. This alert comes in the form of an email to you containing the latest search results on Google for the relevant keyword phrase, and includes news articles, groups, videos, and stories. You can go ahead and set an “overall alert”, which will keep you informed of stories about your brand, your company and all things related, making it easier for you to find new negative feedback.
- Blog Comments: Previously whenever someone posted a comment on any blog using your name in their comment, you had no means of tracking them down. But tools like back type can help you track and monitor all comments about your brand name. These services can help you track, follow, and then share comments on the web.
- Discussion Board: Apart from news and comments on blogs, people also talk about brands and products in various discussion forums. Most people tend to ignore such boards until they see other websites commenting on the information they see. A tool called boardtracker.com helps keep track of threads on discussion boards where your brand name is mentioned.
- FriendFeed: It is considered the highest social aggregator. You can easily retrieve all the accounts you have on various social networks like Twitter, Delicious, Flickr, YouTube, etc. FriendFeed to easily manage things from one place.
- Interactive Search: All the other options on this list are pretty simple but this one is a bit tricky. A tool called Filtrbox only highlights sources that are credible enough to get noticed and doesn’t necessarily throw up hundreds and thousands of pages showing your brand name. This easily saves you a lot of time, and can assist you in dealing with matters that require immediate attention.
- Social Comments: A tool called Yacktrack is especially useful for keeping track of your social comments. It helps you in finding new comments on your content across sources like Digg, Stumbleupon, WordPress, and Blogger, etc. This can help you rejoin conversations you started after seeing different people commenting on the same post, and ensure no one has posted anything negative in due time.
- Twitter: Tweets go viral at lightning speed and you have to catch up with that speed or you’ll be left behind in no time. A tool calledTwitter search notify whenever someone tweets about you. Then you can decide whether to respond to or ignore the Tweet.
So, take advantage of this tool to manage your brand’s online reputation, and grow its reach through the Internet.
The author is a seasoned SEO professional and online reputation management consultant who has helped hundreds of small businesses grow their social media reach, and deal with negative feedback to improve their online reputation.
