Remember back in the day when search results were just ten blue text links on a page?
Back then, the search results were so simple that reputation management was pretty straightforward. You could clearly see if those blue links connected to positive content — if so, your reputation was great.
Occasionally Googling the name of your company, product or service might not be enough.
Time to start managing your online reputation
The time to start managing your online reputation is before it becomes a problem.
If you want to take a more proactive approach and be notified whenever something positive or negative comes up, here is a list of free tools you can use to take control of your digital presence once and for all.
You can use them to monitor not only what people say about your brand, but also your competitors’ reputation and any other type of mention that can interest you.
1. Google Alerts
Yes, good old Google Alerts always come in handy. Most of you have probably tested Google Alerts before. If not, keep reading.
As lots of people get access to content related to your brand through Google searches, it is great to setup a basic Google Alert to get instant, daily or weekly emails about new web pages and posts that contain keywords of your personal interest.
It’s very easy. Just go to google.com/alerts and fill your brand name search query. You can select which type of content you are looking for, your preferred update frequency and quantity. Google Alert will update you and keep you informed about new mentions on the web.
Make sure you add a very specific search query and select the appropriate channel, otherwise you will end up receiving too many alerts in your email inbox.
For instance, Social Fresh might want to monitor this list of terms for their Google Alerts:
- “Social Fresh”
- socialfresh
- socialfresh.com
- socialfreshconference.com
- “the business of social media”
2. Tweet Alarm
More than 5,000 tweets are shared every second. You can search the ones that are about you via Twitter Search, but if you want to create an automatic monitoring system, Tweet Alarm is the perfect solution.
This useful “Google Alert for Twitter” will send you email alerts whenever someone tweets about your brand, products or anything that interests you. Registration is required.
3. Hyper Alerts
If your Facebook page is an important part of your strategy and digital presence, there is an online tool that will help you monitor their activity and get instant email notifications.
With Hyper Alerts, you can get unlimited updates and you don’t need to be a page administrator. This means you can also use it to monitor competitor pages via email alerts.
4. Social Mention
If you have a large company with hundreds of daily mentions across the web and a recognized brand, Social Mention can not only help you track them, but also analyse data from several sources to understand what’s their sentiment and their origin.
With Social Mention, in fact, you can see whether your brand sparked conversations on social media, what is the author/mention ratio, your influence score and the sentiment coming from people.
5. Pin Alerts
You know Pinterest is becoming an increasingly influential platform, especially in some industries. Knowing what’s being shared about you can be very important for your reputation. Wanna know when someone pins something from your website?
With Pin Alerts you can setup a quick and easy alert that will notify you via email in a matter of minutes whenever a new pin comes up.
6. Topsy
Here comes a great social analytics tool: with Topsy you can scan the whole web looking for mentions of your interest. What sets this service apart is the fact that it has indexed every tweet ever posted.
If you are looking for a mention tracking tool that goes back to 2006, Topsy is a great option.
7. If This Then That
You probably heard about If This Then That, a relatively new automation tool that allows you to “put the internet to work for you”. You can connect several online platforms and devices between them, so that you create a so-called “recipe”, an automation script that can help you get notifications, deals, content backups and much more. You can also select one of the public recipes and replicate what other people are doing with IFTTT.
When it comes to online reputation management, this service can be very useful too. Browse recipes to find the best one to monitor your favourite platform and keywords.
8. Übersuggest
Google Autocomplete is probably one of the most underrated sources of good and bad reputation for businesses and brands of all kinds. Whenever you type something on Google, Autocomplete results appear in the search bar dropdown: this is basically the first impression you make with thousands of people.
Übersuggest tool shows you several variations of your Autocomplete values, sorted alphabetically. Not only does it provide the basic brand results, but it also shows any result may come up when users type a letter after your name.
9. Monitor complaint websites
Do you want to make sure nobody is defaming you on complaint sites? Having your brand (be it your personal or company name) appear in one of those websites is one of the worst things that can happen to your business.
With this custom search box you can inspect more than 40 complaint sites. It can also represent a very valuable tool to do market research and prevent future complaints from customers and business partners.
10. Image Raider
Sometimes a picture is worth one thousand words. Is somebody using your images? With Image Raider you can perform an automated reverse image search and discover websites talking about you without mentioning your name and people stealing or distorting your pictures.
Just add the url of the images you want to monitor, or upload the files. The system will then perform an automated search and alert you via email whenever something significant gets indexed. Pay with a tweet system for small submissions. A premium paid service allows you to monitor hundreds of images.
Source: SocialFresh
