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Seven FREE ways to auto-monitor your online reputation
February 22, 2010
The beauty of the internet is that almost everything in the public domain is searchable. This means that when it comes to tracking your online reputation, all you have to do is head over to Google and tap in your name.
The problem is, you’ll probably also want to search for your company name(s), product name(s), URL(s), and the names of any key personnel. What’s more, different search engines pick up different results, so you’ll need to perform multiple searches to avoid missing mentions. Suddenly, this simple task becomes a bit of a drag.
Here are seven free tools to simplify the task of monitoring your online mentions.
Search engine alerts
Track mentions of keywords in news, websites, blogs, videos and groups with Google Alerts. Set alerts to be sent by email either daily or ‘as-it-happens’ (meaning it hits your inbox as soon as it’s indexed by Google). Alternatively, you can create RSS feed to track from inside your favourite reader.
Bing offers much the same functionality, but for news only. Head to Bing News and select ‘News alerts’ from the bottom of the left hand column. For the same service from Yahoo!, visit Yahoo! Alerts and choose ‘Keyword News’ from the box on the right.
Blog tracking
Blogpulse indexes blogs and helps pick up mentions you might not have spotted via the standard search engines. Just search for your key term and then hit the XML icon at the top of the search results to create an RSS feed. You can also search for all posts linking to your site by choosing ‘URL’ in the search options.
Blogpulse won’t pick up everything, so again it’s a matter of combining this with your other tracking efforts. Try Icerocket, which also offers an RSS feed.
Social media monitoring tools
There a dozens of free tools out there for monitoring social media mentions. My favourite at the moment is Social Media Alerts from Social Mention. It searches through over 100 social media platforms such Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google and delivers daily results by email. Searches via the main site will also give you a sense of sentiment and reach, and tell you which users are driving the conversation.
If you want to monitor the number of click throughs on a link you have tweeted, use the Bit.ly shortener service and from their site you can view analytics for clicks of links within your tweets.
Have I missed any great free tools? Let me know.
Good Neighbors Can Make a Difference at the Local Level, says Yahoo
September 21, 2009
I have to admit I find Yahoo one of the most frustrating online companies I have ever encountered. However, I also consider it the biggest innovator, and that’s the frustration. The labs division of the company produces many fantastic products and services, yet only a small percentage of these ever get air time.
The latest product to come from the Silicon Valley beast is Yahoo Neighbors, a mashup between local search and social networking. Currently only available in the States, Neighbors is in effect a message board for local communities. If implemented correctly, this will provide a fantastic real time view of “the word on the street” to Yahoo searchers. I think a good description for this is “the conversation layer”.
Having spent some time playing with Neighbors I have to say it’s brilliant. Its contents are categorised into sections that really matter locally, such as business recommendations, education and even restaurant reviews. While we may discuss how social networks and presence management are essential for business (and they are), often the same thinking doesn’t translate for local businesses. This is where Neighbors could potentially help. Small businesses could exploit the service in numerous ways, from basic exposure, to the creation of a “linked-in” style authority status, but at a local level.
Yahoo Neighbors is pretty awesome, and the concept of the conversation layer doesn’t just apply to the larger and more web savvy businesses. This is a service that seems to bridge that gap between large and small extremely well.
I just hope it’s not another bright idea that gets stifled due to lack of business support from the big Purple. Oh, and I also hope that it eventually finds its way over the pond to us!
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