1. Monitor

We Monitor And Track What Is Being Said Online about You

You need to know what is being said about your brand. You should be aware that ordinary individuals influence how the general public views your brand. It is very easy for anyone to publish information on CGM sites such as blogs, podcasts, and opinion forums. You must monitor these online conversations. However, the size and complexity of the internet, coupled with the speed at which news travels, means that it is difficult to continuously monitor everything being said.

To address this problem, you need an early warning system to alert you of all news relating to your brand, so you may apply remedies when needed. There are internet monitoring services available that do the work for you. Such monitoring systems will not only inform you of news and information relating to your brand, but will also help you to gather market intelligence and assess developing trends.

To monitor your brand’s reputation we do the following:

• Set up Google and Yahoo Alerts to catch the use of your brands in the news.
• Use sites such as Feedster and Technorati to watch your brand in blogs.
• Customize RSS readers for brand tracking.
• Track for all names including brand names, company names, product names, and key employee names.
• Monitor industry-related sites.

Once a monitoring system is in place for your brand, you should also track additional information like competing brands and organizations, industry terms, as well as general industry news.

Monitoring gives you an immediate heads-up if adverse information appears. Monitoring is an essential and useful tactic for controlling adverse information within your search engine space. Unfortunately, monitoring by itself is not enough.

If you were to search for your company name on your favorite search engine, would your company be on top of the heap? What about the other results on the same page? What do these pages say about your company? People rarely rely on just the top listing anymore. Ideally, you should be able to control the entire first page. Become proactive. Controlling your search space and what people read about your brand becomes easier to control then. It is important to analyze your current space in order to take action to control it.

This is your territory. This is where the battle for hearts and minds are ultimately won.