There are ways to find out what people are saying about your company, your products and your advertising.
Tip #1: Set up to receive Google Alerts. Google Alerts crawl the internet for any reference to a topic you are tracking and will alert you in an email. Let’s say, for example, you want to track your company name or product. Anytime they are discussed, written about or posted, you are alerted. The email updates are free and includes a link to that blog, website, news article or video that mentions that item. You can track multiple topics or keywords. You can even track your competition!
Tip #2: Always monitor your web analytics data. Stats are crucial when you want to learn detailed information about your website visitors. Monitor results of your internet marketing campaigns. You’ll want to know which sites are sending traffic to your site. A better understanding of where your traffic is coming from will help you choose the right way to monitor social networks effectively. For example, if a lot of your traffic comes from Facebook, you’ll want to spend more time using those services.
Tip #3: Now, you can search Facebook! There is a search box on the top right hand side of each Facebook page. Search for your company’s name or product to see if anyone is talking about it. The search engine, provided by Bing, will soon be integrated with Facebook updates and will put public updates into Bing’s search results.
Tip #4: Speaking of searching social media, search Twitter and monitor any conversations about your business. Bing is indexing Twitter updates and soon Google’s Social Search will be able to search Twitter updates, too. TweetDeck is a Twitter tool that will help you monitor real-time tweets using a specific key word of your choice.
Tip #5: BackType is similar to Google Alerts. Many use BackType to monitor blogs. You can receive emails with links to comments that include the topics and keywords you want to monitor. You can go to those blogs and join in the conversation by commenting and linking back to your website or corporate blog.