High school students aren't the only ones who need to worry about having a bad reputation online! In fact, social media and the Internet have taken everything, including the business world, into another realm far bigger than any high school locker room. However, unlike kids who can only ditch bad reputations by transferring schools or graduating, online reputations of businesses can be changed with close monitoring and free Internet tools.
Beware of the Mud-slingers
One bad thing about online reputations is they are hard to find out about if one doesn't know where to look. Online reputations can be created by social media posts, website content and blogs, plus via word of mouth by company employees or customers. Remember, not all employees are judicious enough to make sure their social media pages are set to private, so it is possible these people could post company information available to anyone.
To make sure everything said online about your company is not only accurate, but favorable, check out these free tools for online reputation monitoring:
- Google Alerts: Ease of use and price (Free!) are two of the biggest reasons people use Google Alerts for reputation management. Those facts, coupled with the tool's effectiveness, make it a popular choice for both individuals and businesses interested in keeping track of their online reputation. Users need only enter a term to be tracked, and then emails will be generated each time the track is mentioned. From there, users are able to see where and when the term was used.
- WhosTalkin: Users enjoy WhosTalkin because it sends alerts when keywords and brands are mentioned on the web and on social media accounts. Plus, videos and images containing the keywords or brands are also made available. This tool is free and easy to use; however, only one social networking site can be looked up at one time. The process of checking each social networking site for the mention of a keyword or a brand can take some time. There is an option for having results mailed to the users, which may save some time.
- Social Mention: Not only is Social Mention a free tool for reputation monitoring, it’s an asset for business management—the tool analyzes when and how a brand is mentioned. So why does this analysis matter? For starters, it lets users know who is talking about the keyword or brand. After all, mentions carry more clout when they’re being made by others in the industry than by tweens in a Twitter-war. Another benefit offered by Social Mention is that users are alerted for each keyword or brand mention made.
- Technorati: Technorati is a go-to free tool for anyone interested in basic results, especially concerning blogs. Bloggers often like the tool because it tracks blogs to show who links back to each post. Users are able to see how successful each post was with readers. Users can also subscribe to alerts from Technorati to view this information.
- Naymz: Forget worrying about credit scores; now is the time to worry about a RepScore. Naymz is a free tool that gives users a RepScore. According to the Naymz.com site, a RepScore is a scoring system that measures users' reputations compared to other users in the same network. The score ranges from 1-10 and is based on the user's social activity and sharing. The site offers a variety of different tools to help determine a user's online reputation and features ways to help make that reputation positive.
Clean Up Your Act
The free tools for online reputation management make it easy to track what's being said online; however, good business practices go a long way in making sure the things said online are positive from the get go.
photo credit: AJC1
Dana Rasmussen is a freelance writer who frequently talks about social media, online reputation monitoring, and business management.
