| HOW TO PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS’S ONLINE REPUTATION |
The internet is a place where people talk—a lot—and when they talk about you, you need to be aware. Online information circulates at warp speed, so you need to know about anything negative instantly, to nip it in the bud and protect your brand. But you also want to know when positive things are being said, so you can quickly take advantage of the opportunity to amplify those positive comments and reviews.
The problem is, you probably don’t have a lot of time to scour the internet looking for brand mentions. But thanks to modern technology, you don’t have to. Here are the tools to make the job simple and quick.
Paid Options. There are brand monitoring solutions big companies use that can cost thousands of dollars a month. However, those provide more than most small businesses need, to adequately monitor their brands. Here are two reasonably priced solutions:
• Hootsuite. For $99 a month, it monitors major social platforms for the keywords and hashtags you tell it.
• X Pro (formerly TweetDeck). This is a service on X (formerly Twitter) that can be accessed with an X Premium subscription for $8 a month. It’s fairly simple to set up a dashboard to monitor keywords and hashtags, and find out what users on X are saying about you and your brand.
The Free Stuff. There are also free brand monitoring solutions that can work well. However, you will have to spend a few minutes a day using them—and you’ll have to do it consistently.
• Google searches. Prospects and clients are Googling you, so you want to know what they’re seeing. Don’t stop with your name—add terms with your name, such as “your name + town you’re based in.” Take a few minutes to Google yourself every day.
• Google Alerts. This free service automates your Google searches. You tell Google Alerts specific keywords, phrases, and topics, and it sends you email notifications when new search results matching those criteria appear on the web. You can set Alerts for misspellings of your name or business name, and even for your competitors to monitor their mentions.
• Social media searches. Every major social platform has a search function and some work fairly well. Just go to Facebook, X, YouTube, etc., and type your keywords into the search box. It takes just a few minutes to do searches on all the major platforms.
• A note on Facebook groups. Facebook blocks searches into private and secret groups. Public groups are searchable, but most groups aren’t public. So, to monitor your business mentions in Facebook groups, you’ll have to join the group and then use the search function.
You may feel you don’t have time for all this. But remember, it just takes one negative comment to damage your reputation—and one glowing comment to land you another piece of business!
