As Kristin pointed out in her recent guest blog post “Reputation Management – What If Someone Says Something Bad About Me?” it is important to monitor what people say about your brand online.
This is true for both responding to negative comments and criticism as well as finding and amplifying positive mentions.
As I always point out, being present on the most important Social Media pages is important for any brand today. Having a presence on Facebook and Twitter gives customers, and potential customers, the chance to communicate with you directly, ask questions and vent their gripes.
What about comments that are not placed directly on your pages though? The fact that you don’t see the comments doesn’t mean they are not there! Make sure you monitor your brand!
Below I will introduce the most important ways to monitor your Digital Media Presence. In the meantime
Check out this list on List.ly and add to it if you like.
Every Business should claim their Google Places location! Places show up above the organic Google search results and are worth more than most of the SEO $$ people spend. Google Places gives you the opportunity to brand your listing and add details as well as images, videos and specials.
They also give everyone the opportunity to write reviews! If you don’t monitor these reviews you could end up with problematic responses right on top of the Google search results!
(Please contact me if you need help with setting up your Google Places)
Especially if you have a unique business name you should set up this handy free service. Everytime someone writes your search term online the little Google robots find it and send you an email.
Unfortunately Google stopped indexing Twitter 
so I searched for other ways to do the same on Twitter. Let’s say someone talks about me without putting @Tweet4Ok in the tweet – cowardly I know but possible 
.
These two tools will keep me posted:
TWEETBEEP.COM
TWEETALARM.COM
Yelp works very much like Google Places – users add reviews via a web interface or mobile apps. Yelp lets you customize your search by categories and your physical location. As a business owner you have the chance to upload your information and images for free. If you have registered your business you get email alerts about the activity on your listings. I’m not sure how much is Yelp used locally but in in the US it is an important tool. Do you have experiences with Yelp? Please leave a comment!
As the name suggest Trip Advisor is a tool that lets users recommend and rate accommodations. Tourism businesses are still well advised to have a profile on this site even though the value of the feedback seems to be compromised by some places seemingly boost their ratings artificially.
We are all connected customers! We may be business owners but we are also customers. It should be logical to respond to feedback to either learn, explain or counter criticism.
Have you ever left feedback at a feedback site? What was your experience?
Frithjof is a Social Media Consultant and blogger – read more about his views on Digital Media topics at http://tweet4ok.com/blog
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