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Hands up all of the Marketing people who remember the days when you used to trawl through the newspaper each and every day, checking to see what was being said about your shopping centre, retail store or small business!
Thank goodness these days the process has been simplified with online tools and social media monitoring. In this blog post I’m going to share with you two of my favourite FREE online tools which you can use to monitor your brand or business.
Why you need to monitor your brand online
In the online world there are plenty of ways for people to start a conversation about your business regardless of whether you choose to be part of the conversation or not. Some businesses think that by not having a Facebook page, blog or Twitter account that this will stop the conversation from taking place, however this is of course, not the case. Online alerts and social media monitoring will provide you with knowledge and knowledge is power, you just need to decide how to use it.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is my all time favourite online monitoring tool which I have been using for quite some time now. In my previous role as a shopping centre Marketing Manager there were never enough hours in the day. To help me keep on top of everything I would set up alerts which were emailed straight to my inbox about anything which could potentially affect my shopping centre brand or the community. These alerts even helped me to keep an eye on my competitors. All you need to do is visit www.google.com/alerts and you can set up your keywords. If you have not set up an alert I would highly recommend you start monitoring each of the following:
All you have to do is fill in these fields and click ‘create alert’, it’s that easy:
Google Alerts will search everything on the web (with the exception of mentions on social networking sites) this includes news, blogs, videos, discussions and books. If you write blog posts it will also help you to identify when/if your posts are being indexed by the search engine.
Alerti
Recently there has been a bit of buzz about a tool called Alerti, which monitors Facebook, Twitter and Flickr (in addition to news, blogs, forums and videos). You can sign up for a free account which will enable you to set up two alerts. With each alert you can choose how often you are notified (real time, once a day or weekly), you can tag searches to make it easier to locate them again in future (similar to a filing system) and it allows you to set tasks to follow up as required. This is what your Alert will consist of:
These are just two of the many tools available.
Do you have a favourite online alert or social media monitoring tool which is cost effective and delivers results? As a retailer or small business owner is this something you would find valuable? As a marketing manager is this standard practice in your company?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below, I always enjoy hearing what other people do because it’s one of the best ways to grow and learn.
If you need help setting up your online social media monitoring for your business please don’t hesitate to call and find out how we can assist.
Author: Celina Johnson, iSocialize
