Tools for Online Reputation Monitoring

To effectively manage your brand's online reputation, you first need to be able to listen to the conversation. You need to know what people are saying about your brand, your products, and your competitors across the entire web.

Online reputation monitoring is the process of using tools to track these mentions. A good monitoring tool can help you to catch negative feedback before it escalates, to find positive mentions that you can amplify, and to gain valuable insights into how your brand is perceived.

Here are some of the most effective and popular tools for online reputation monitoring, including both free and paid options.

Free and Essential Monitoring Tools

1. Google Alerts

• What it is: This is the most fundamental and easy-to-use monitoring tool, and it's completely free.
• How it works: You tell Google Alerts which keywords you want to monitor (e.g., your brand name). Whenever Google indexes a new webpage, a news article, or a blog post that contains your keyword, it will send you an email notification.
• Why it's essential: It's the simplest way to keep track of how your brand is being mentioned across the wider web. You should set up alerts for your brand name, your product names, and your key executives.

2. TweetDeck

• What it is: A free and powerful dashboard for monitoring Twitter.
• How it works: You can create custom columns in your dashboard to track specific keywords, hashtags, or mentions of your Twitter handle in real-time.
• Why it's essential: If your audience is active on Twitter, this is a great way to stay on top of the fast-moving conversation.

3. Google Search Console

• What it is: While primarily an SEO tool, the "Links" report in GSC can show you which websites are linking to you, which is a form of a brand mention.

Paid (Freemium) Social Listening Tools

For more comprehensive monitoring, especially on social media, you may want to invest in a dedicated social listening tool. Most of these offer a limited free plan or a free trial. There are many powerful tools that monitor both social media and the wider web for mentions of your keywords. They provide a real-time feed of your mentions from a huge variety of sources, and also have features for sentiment analysis and for identifying key influencers who are talking about your brand.

Review Site Monitoring

You also need to monitor your profiles on the key review sites for your industry.

• How to do it: For most platforms, you can and should turn on the notifications so that you receive an email alert every time a new review is posted for your business.

Building Your Monitoring Workflow

1. Set up Google Alerts for your core brand terms. This is your baseline.
2. Set up notifications on your key review site profiles.
3. If your budget allows, sign up for a free trial of a social listening tool to see the volume of conversation about your brand. If it's significant, it may be worth investing in a paid plan.
4. Make it a habit to check your monitoring feeds on a regular basis.

Conclusion

You can't manage a conversation that you're not a part of. Online reputation monitoring is the essential first step in protecting and in shaping your brand's perception online. By using a combination of these simple tools, you can effectively listen to what your customers and your market are saying, which will allow you to engage in the conversation, to manage any issues proactively, and to gain the insights you need to build a stronger brand.