3 Free Tools to Manage your Reputation Online
I wrote yesterday about blog posts being hijacked and copied with no credit to the original author or links back to the original content. After reading the list of comments from that post I realized that this is happening to many of us here on ActiveRain. So, I thought I would follow that post up with a few tips on how you can easily manage your online reputation for FREE.
Google Alerts can be set up for free and you don't even need a Google account. You can set up alerts for any search term you'd like and Google will email you anytime your term shows up on the web. For example, you can see what people are saying about your blog post by setting an alert for "Your Blog Post Title". You can also customize how often Google scans for matching content, how often they email you results, and what types of sites they scan.
Google Alerts can be a great automated way to find out anytime your name or company are mentioned online, allowing you to comment when needed and be your own Public Relations department.
Twitter is another great platform for monitoring and managing your online reputation. You may be using Twitter for your business but are you using it to see what others are saying about your business? Most of the big companies are doing it. Bank of America is tweeting in response to people mentioning B of A in their tweets. And even BP is doing their best to manage their reputation through tweets (even though it may be a lost cause).
To start using Twitter for this purpose just go to your Twitter home page and on the right side you should see a search bar. Use the search bar the same way you would on Google, inserting quotes around the term when looking for words in a certain order. Just above your search results you will see a little green + sign saying 'Save this search'. Once you save the search you can easily run the search from your home page anytime to get real time results for tweets mentioning your search phrase. A great way to start using this is to set up a search for "your name", so you can see if anyone is talking about you!
Facebook has become wildly popular among real estate agents because of the networking opportunities and contact management tools it provides. But another use that is often overlooked is its search engine. Because Facebook has privacy controls you may not get results that are quite as comprehensive as the previous 2 examples. But considering the widespread use of Facebook, it is a tool you can't afford to ignore.
At the top of your page there is a search bar just like in the Twitter example. Again, you can search the same way you would on Google. Facebook will populate some suggestions as you type your search term, so to make sure you get the results you want be sure to click on the 'See more results for...' button at the bottom of the suggestions. Once you get to the results page you will probably see a list of suggested pages or profiles. To get to the good stuff you have to click on the 'Posts by Everyone' option at the left side of the page. This will display any public posts that mention your search term. Again, a great way to start is to see if anyone is mentioning you directly or your company.
If you do find that you or your company are being talked about you now have a great opportunity to respond and present yourself as a thoughtful professional. Not only will this go along way toward protecting your reputation, it will present you as a savvy agent who is armed with the tools necessary to compete in today's online marketing world.
Who is talking about you or your brand in their blog posts, Tweets or Facebook posts?
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