Yesterday I presented at the CASE Europe Beyond the Hype conference. You can see my presentation in the previous blog post. The focus of the session was really to talk about making the internal 'sell' for time and resource to support social media. I always say that before you do anything with social media (or all online media for that matter), and even if ultimately you do nothing else, the first thing you must do, and the one thing you must maintain is listening. Monitoring conversations about your brand online is critical to:
- Monitor your reputation and understand what others really think of you
- Spot ambassadors for your brand whom you may nurture and encourage
- Identify potential crises in the making
- Spot opportunities for product or service developments
- Spot when the moment is right to enter an online conversation and engage.
As such, we were discussing the tools available out there for monitoring brands online. Here are a few that I suggested delegates take a look at:
- Google alerts
- blogsearch.google.com
- technorati.com
- www.whostalkin.com
- search.twitter.com
- www.perspctv.com
- www.sm2.techrigy.com
One of the participants pointed out that they have found students who have used the review feature on Amazon to post comments about their university courses through the book pages of course books that they have to read on that particular course. A novel place to critique a course, but an interesting example of how you should look in even some of the more unlikely places to check out what people are saying about your brand!
