Διαχείρηση φήμης article by Yfran Garcia

Using Social Media Tools to Effectively Monitor Your Business

By Yfran Garcia (693 words)
Posted in Brand Reputation Management on November 15, 2011
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Nowadays, it's pretty standard to find a company using social media to grow their business as well as better connect to their customers. As a result, businesses are able to accomplish marketing goals such as acquiring new customers, keeping existing customers, and more importantly, increasing sales. Although businesses may believe that using social media to increase sales is all that makes up effective social media practice, understanding and improving your online brand reputation proves also to be a vital step in the equation.

Does your business know what's being said about it? Is your service as optimized as it could be? Are your customers happy? The truth is, no matter how fantastically mind-blowing your product is, there will always be a few people who have a problem with it. But don't worry. This is a good thing. A company can never improve if ALL of their customers were happy. But knowing some of the concerns is important to a business' success. So how does your company find these unhappy people? After first speaking to their friends about it, to your business' advantage, disgruntled customers will then vent their frustrations on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.


Social Media Tools and Practices

It's in your business' best interest to start monitoring all the conversation that's being said on the internet. The tools and practices listed below will help you achieve this:

• Google Alerts: Google Alerts is a program that tracks any online activity on any topic of your choice. Your company's name can be entered in one of the alerts and Google will send you an e-mail notification with the link to anything being said about you. This free tool is simple, useful and convenient.

• HootSuite: A big player in the social media monitoring game is HootSuite. This platform allows you to manage multiple accounts at the same time and schedule timed updates on both Twitter and Facebook. HootSuite also allows you to see who is talking about your company through Twitter mentions and hash tag searches (διάφορες αναζητήσεις - συζητήσεις), which updates in real-time. The most prominent (προεξέχουσα) feature of HootSuite however is the ability to get analytics about the social behaviors of your customers. Reports vary from how many clicks a link received (and at what times of the day) to your follower growth. This tool is a must if you are serious about reputation management. NOTE: TweetDeck is also a good solution for basic brand monitoring.

• Listing your venue in directories: Another easy way to stay-up-to-date on what your customers are saying about your company is to list your venue in directories like Google Places, Yellow Pages, or Yelp. Yelp is a city guide to venues that offers reviews on a variety of businesses from restaurants to doctor offices. The best thing about the reviews is that they come from consumers. So list your venue, add pictures, and listen to what people have to say about your business.

• Technorati: It's worthwhile to utilize top blog search engine Technorati to find out whether your business is being talked about on blogs and even in blog comments. Upon locating conversation about your company, Technorati also gives you the option to immediately join-in on the discussion. Your business can really benefit from clearing up a problem in the blog comments before the problem worsens, spreads and goes unanswered.

The key to good social media practice is to take an active approach into what your customers are saying about your business, and then doing what you can to fix it.
Does your business practice brand monitoring? Do you have a tool or practice you would like to add? Please let us know in the comments below or reach out to us via Twitter.