The internet is a vast, sprawling community that encompasses people from all walks of life. Including your customers. It is important to monitor the chatter about your brand – so that you know what your clients like and dislike about your products and services and can tailor your business to meet their needs. Monitoring also benefits you by allowing you to head off complaints and negative feedback by solving the situation quickly and publicly – and converting those unhappy with your business into loyal customers. Luckily, there are ways to quickly capture nearly everything that’s said about you online in the real time– for free.

Social Media Monitoring

1)  Set up Google Alerts for everything – including misspellings. Occasionally your customers will misspell your company or products name in their rants or raves – but don’t miss out! Include misspellings in your Google Alerts. Don’t forget to read each one!

2)  Create saved searches on Twitter or your third party apps. Use quotes, monitor your hash tags, and again, search for those misspellings! You’ll be surprised at what comes up.

3)  Check your Facebook stats! Read your page’s Facebook insights and read through the comments, likes and wall posts. (Side note: It pays to respond to your comments!)

4)  Search LinkedIn – Search for updates, answers etc. Answer questions when you can!