This blog post is the second in the 2 part series on brand monitoring. In case you missed the first blog post,  here is the link: Monitor Your Brand Online.

Online Reputation Monitoring can be as simple as creating alerts on Google or as comprehensive as subscribing to a syndicated monitoring service like Radian6 that  gives you a complete platform to listen, measure and engage with your customers across the entire social web. You can hire a Social Media Monitoring company who will not only use syndicated or subscription tools like Radian6 and employ a combination of techniques and report on what’s being said but will also formulate effective response strategies and implement reputation management techniques.
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One of the main objectives for all social media marketing initiatives for a brand is to “navigate the narrative”. In other words,  to ensure that your competitors or disgruntled customers don’t steer conversations in a way that put you on the defensive.

In order to cultivate the conversations taking place in the social media arena, you need to know that they’re happening! Social media monitoring is the somewhat new but indispensable tool that all serious marketers should use in order to keep track of what people are saying about their brand, their products and their competitors.

The first step to monitoring your brand reputation is listening. Whoever said “eavesdroppers are never happy” could not have been more wrong. You might not be always be happy with what you hear about your brand but I guarantee that you will be a lot unhappier if you don’t listen in!

Social media is the speakeasy for all those incessant public conversations that you must listen in on and eventually join.

One simple way to discover what people are saying about your brand is to simply create a Google Alert so that you’ll get an email anytime your brand name is mentioned.

However, Google Alerts are limited – and aren’t designed to be a comprehensive online brand management tool. That’s why you need to use a variety of online tools to find out what people are saying.

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