Is Your Company’s Reputation On Alert?
In today’s business world your company’s reputation is everything and being able to monitor what people are saying about it is paramount. Now that 1.5 billion people have access to the Internet and the fact that every five seconds someone writes a comment about a product, what re they saying about your products? If you are like me I’d sure like to know what they are saying about me and my company. Well now you can.
You may not be aware of a free service that Google offers called Google Alerts. This great little Google app can be used in dozens of ways in your business. You can find people asking questions related to your products and services, be notified when new competitors hit the web, and probably the most important, when a customer is talking about you. Using Google Alerts is one tool you should be using to alert you about your company’s reputation globally.
To setup a Google Alert account, go to www.google.com/alerts. You’ll see a simple form where you can imput any term you want to be notified about and have it sent to your email box every day with the results Google has found you are tracking. In order to effectively track your reputation, you’re going to want to track the name of your company, your name, and the name of your products.
The real secret of using the Google Alerts is to use quotes. If you don’t, you will find Google will provide you with alerts for any portion of the name you are tracking. I set up “Cornerstone Media Group” in quotes so I only get the results for our company’s full name not for each individual word or combination there of that are unrelated.
The power of this application is that it alerts you to both the positive and the negative comments people are making and the sort of negative comments your competition may be saying about you as well. It will also alert you to where the comment was made on the web. Having this sort of information allows you to respond to any negative immediately.
The Po!nt: Remember what Newsweek magazine said recently, “You are only as good as Google says your are!” Keeping track of what the world is saying about you, your company and your products has just gotten easier.
As always we welcome your comments and thoughts.
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