PEOPLE ARE TALKING. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE SAYING?

Three Ways to Find Out What Your Customers are Saying About You Online

Managing your online reputation is one of the most important elements of online marketing success. Small business owners from all different types of industries are realizing just how much social media and online reviews can affect their ability to generate new customers.

It is important to keep track of what your customers are saying about you on the web so you can manage your online reputation and adequately adjust elements of your company to better fit the needs of your customers.

But how do you do that when the world wide web is so massive?

Fortunately, there are ways to achieve this through new improvements in internet technology over the years.

Here are three of the easiest ways to find out what your customers are saying about you online so you can gain control of your reputation:

Google Alerts

Google has a powerful tool that sends you emails every time a new page or result is posted about your business, or uses certain keywords or topics. You can easily subscribe to Google alerts through RSS and track everything that comes up about your company. This will let you know when new information is posted that mentions your company’s name (or any other parameters you setup), such new articles, press releases or reviews.

Board Tracker

Many business owners have realized that the majority of the information released about their company actually comes on message boards. It can be difficult to manage the activity on forums and boards, which is why the BoardTracker application was created. This application will keep track of any mentions of your company on any discussion board or forum. This will allow you to address negative complaints or posts and to build a better dialogue with your customers.

Social Media Alerts

With the prevalence of social networks in our world today, many business owners are finding that these sites are some of the most influential when it comes to their online reputations.

To stay on top of what people are saying about your business on social media, sign up for alerts for each platform that has this feature. You can also use hashtags to see what’s being said about your company on social media sites.

Sentiment Metrics searches through photo and video sharing sites, social networks, review sites and more to find mentions about your business. This is a powerful tracking tool that can truly help you track and monitor your brand’s online presence.

These are just a few starting points for businesses that are serious about keeping better track of what is being mentioned about their companies online.

The TRUE value in staying on top of what is being said about your business lies in how you handle your findings. Will you take actions that will further improve your reputation?… or will you simply ignore them?