4 Free Software Tools to Monitor Your Online Reputation

It's more important than ever to be aware of what consumers are saying about your business. Negative online reviews can cause tremendous damage to your online reputation and sales.

Consumer reviews may include both positive and negative commentary regarding price, customer service, as well as overall quality of their experience with your business.  Positive reviews are fantastic and we'll write an article in the near future about how to acquire more positive reviews online. It's the negative reviews that you need to know about quickly, so you can properly address them before they do harm to your reputation.

1. Google Alerts.


You consider setting up Google alerts for your business name, the names of key team members, and your website address, at a minimum.  Google will then send you email alerting you to any mentions concerning your business, as well as any other alerts you setup.  To set go, to www.google.com/alerts

2. Social Mention.


Social Mention allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company,  new products, or any topic across the web's social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.  To set up, go to www.socialmention.com 

3. Mention.


Mention is similar to SocialMention.com in that it queries the social media channels for your brand mentions. Create alerts on your name, your brand, your industry and your competitors and be informed of any mention on the web and social networks. The nicest feature of Mention is that it is accessible across all devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, and smart phone). It also provides real time alerts. This is invaluable when it comes to negative mentions of your brand… you are alerted immediately.  To set up, go to www.mention.net

4. Netvibes.


NetVibes is a pretty powerful dashboard, allowing you to monitor your brand across Google, the blogosphere, and the social platforms. The free version (somewhat limited) allows you to enter your business name and view real time results.  To set up, go to www.netvibes.com/en

A Consumer Survey (2012) indicated 72% of consumers surveyed reported they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Additionally, the survey revealed 65% of consumers read between 2-10 reviews before they felt they could trust a local business. 

Regardless of the tool that you select, it's critically important to be proactive and monitor your businesses reputation online. In upcoming posts, we'll share ideas for soliciting positive reviews, as well as how to proactively and effectively deal with negative reviews.

As always, if you have questions about this topic, or any other website or social media questions, please give MSW Interactive Designs a call!

Follow MSW Interactive Designs
Sandy Waggett, MSW Interactive Designs LLC ~ We put the web to work for you!
573-552-8403


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Instagram is an Important Social Media Platform for Business

4 Sources for Finding What's Trending

Protect Yourself from Falling for Phishing or Spoofing Attempts.