Curious what people are saying about your business online?
It's important to monitor your online reputation… Actually, it's critical.
93% of consumers read reviews before buying. That means, if you're not monitoring mentions and reviews, you're operating blindly.
What's more…
One bad review can take your reputation downhill. One. Negative. Review.
And suddenly, your customers are at your competitors' doorsteps.
Fortunately, monitoring your online reputation is easier than ever with powerful tools.
Why your reputation should be on a tight leash
The 10 best free and paid reputation monitoring tools
Setting up alerts to save you time and energy
Take a second and think about the last time you made a purchase online.
If you're anything like the average consumer, the first thing you did was check the reviews. Right?
Consumers are just like you. They'll google your business name and comb through reviews and social comments.
That's their first impression of your business.
And if you're not monitoring, you'll never know these reviews exist. You'll miss out on responding to great feedback or, more importantly, addressing negative reviews.
When it comes to online reputation management services, having a solid monitoring system is your first line of defense. That's where professional solutions come in. Services at www.interneterasure.co.uk specialize in tracking and managing your online presence across multiple platforms in real-time, so nothing slips through the cracks.
94% of customers say a negative review has influenced their decision to avoid a company.
Do you see that massive amount of business you're losing because you're not monitoring feedback?
For most companies, the first time they become aware of a reputation issue is when they stumble across it online. At that point, it's too late.
Here's a little known secret.
Google Alerts is free. It's the simplest reputation monitoring tool out there. But most people don't even use it.
It's not complicated to set up. It's effective. And you can monitor brand mentions across the web.
Here's how it works:
You set up a Google Alert for your business name or brand keywords. Whenever Google indexes new content that matches those terms, you get an email.
Boom. That's it.
You can set up as many alerts as you want, too. Monitor variations of your name, common misspellings, competitors, and more.
The mistake most people make…
They set up one alert for their business name and forget it.
Noooo.
Set up alerts for every iteration of your business name, domain, key products or services, common misspellings, and competitors.
Social is where the fires ignite. Social is where you build a reputation.
Reputations can either be destroyed or made over a few viral posts. It can happen in hours.
You need monitoring tools to scan all the major platforms in real-time.
Hootsuite monitors multiple social media accounts in one dashboard. Set up social media streams to watch keywords, mentions, and hashtags.
Respond quickly without switching between platforms.
Mention is a fantastic real-time tool that scans over a billion sources per day, including social, forums, blogs, and news.
They use proprietary algorithms to find when your brand is mentioned anywhere online.
You also get advanced sentiment analysis… So you know whether mentions are good, bad, or neutral. (You can thank me later.)
Brand24 specializes in social and web monitoring. It captures and categorizes mentions from across the internet, providing a variety of analytics.
Includes real-time notifications, sentiment tracking, and influencer identification.
Reviews. Customer feedback.
Your business depends on reviews. Reviews can make or break your business. Literally.
Reviews are all over the place, though. GMB, Yelp, Facebook, industry-specific sites. Manually monitoring is crazy.
Pulls reviews from all the major platforms into one dashboard. ReviewTrackers make it easy to view, respond to, and track reviews.
Receive alerts when new reviews are posted, so you can respond ASAP.
Podium specializes in local reviews and interactions. Includes features to send automated review requests and make it simple for customers to leave reviews.
If a customer leaves a negative review, you get the opportunity to contact them immediately.
You'll never know when a news article, blog post, or industry publication will mention your business.
And when they do mention you, the information will be online in no time.
Monitoring news and media monitoring is a critical part of any online reputation monitoring system.
Enterprise-level tool that monitors news sites, blogs, and social media. Includes advanced analytics and sentiment analysis.
Great for PR disasters or tracking industry trends.
Similar to regular Google Alerts, but this version focuses on news articles, press releases, and other media. This is a free tool that's a great place to start.
People are more than willing to talk about brands in forums and on Reddit.
People will say anything on Reddit… Good, bad, and everything in between. You'll get very candid, raw, unfiltered feedback about your business. Is it all good? Of course not. That's not how it works.
But it's gold to your brand. It's extremely valuable to listen to these conversations.
Challenge? There are hundreds of forums and thousands of subreddits. It's impossible to monitor by hand.
F5Bot is free and designed to monitor Reddit, Hacker News, and Lobsters.
Enter keywords and F5Bot will send an email when it finds them. It's simple but effective.
Full disclosure: 97% of consumers search online for local businesses. So not only should you be monitoring these platforms, it's no longer an option.
It's one thing to have access to all these tools. It's another to use them correctly.
Create a list of everything you want to monitor. Your business name, product names, key industry keywords.
Pick your tools, based on budget. Free tools are sufficient for most small businesses. Medium and large businesses should have deeper, more comprehensive tools that use automation to save time.
Create your alerts, but don't create a system you'll abandon due to being flooded with notifications. Pick your priorities and start with the most important keywords and channels.
Finally, design a process to respond to mentions. Who handles them? What's the response time?
A quick reminder:
You don't need to set up a perfect monitoring system. That's a time-wasting trap.
Your goal is to find the important stuff. Mentions that can impact your reputation. Mentions that need a response.
Don't get caught in the trap of monitoring but taking no action.
When you discover mentions, you need to decide how to respond.
Acknowledge and thank for positive reviews. Respond promptly and clarify if it's a neutral mention.
Negative reviews take more work…
Never get into a shouting match online. You will lose. You will look terrible.
Thank the person for taking the time to leave feedback. Acknowledge the issue (don't argue or get defensive). Offer to make things right.
Response time is critical. The longer it takes to respond to a negative review, the more it can spread and the worse it looks.
With a working monitoring system in place, it's important to track your progress.
Most reputation monitoring services offer analytics and tracking tools for sentiment, mention volume, and more.
These reports and metrics are a powerful way to understand if your reputation is growing or declining.
Identify patterns in the feedback. Are there common themes, both positive and negative?
This data will help you both grow your business and your reputation simultaneously.
Online reputation monitoring is no longer a chore.
The best tools and this guide arm you with everything you need to manage your online reputation.
Start with free tools like Google Alerts.
As your business grows, scale to comprehensive platforms that will give you a deeper view and save time with automation.
Most importantly?
Start.
Every day you're not monitoring is a day you're not on top of your brand's reputation.
Set up your first alert. Do it today.
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
Supriyo Khan
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