Do you know what your customers or clients are saying about your brand, product or services? In today’s digital world, it’s a mistake not to monitor online and social media for conversations that are occurring about your business. Reputations are at stake, and as a business owner, you can no longer afford to ignore online criticism. The unfortunate reality is that complaints and criticisms are posted, forwarded or re-tweeted more frequently than are compliments!

For example, I recently read a thread on Facebook where my friend posted a comment complaining about a long wait in the doctors’ office for an appointment (naming the doctor), and lack of concern by the office staff. This comment was followed by numerous posts by their friends in response, who also complained about their experience with physicians’ offices. With Facebook currently having 400 million active members, the potential for an exponentially larger thread is significant.

Besides organic conversations in social media, there are a myriad of user-review websites for all categories of consumer services where customers can post comments about their experience. Yelp.com, for example, has categories ranging from Arts & Entertainment to Health and Medical, and to Restaurants. Yelp covers cities in the U.S. and abroad. Additionally, there are individual consumer bloggers who may not be well known, but who have amassed a large following and can easily influence buyers.

To stay on top of your reputation in this digital world, you need to monitor the conversations about your brand or product. One place to focus is the online forums where conversations about you and your products are most likely to be occurring, such as Facebook.com, etc. If you are not already doing so, we recommend that you start immediately.

Monitoring can be done relatively easily and cost-effectively. One extremely simple, and no cost, method is to set up keyword searches using Google (Google Alerts). Another way that is also free, is to get RSS feeds from websites where people might be talking about your services. Also, do occasional keyword searches for your product or brand on popular social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

You may outgrow the capabilities of free monitoring tools because:

• There is a high volume of chatter about your product or brand;
• You’ve discovered there is an audience in the social media world you can cultivate and nurture, and/or;
• You wish to identify product evangelists.

At that point, consider paying for social media monitoring services or hiring a PR or marketing agency to manage your social media program. If social media is not part of your marketing program, you could benefit from consulting with a PR or marketing agency to help you establish a plan for leveraging social media to your advantage. A consultant can guide you by identifying your audience and developing a campaign to reach out to them about your latest news, events or product offerings, as well as to identify negative posts before they can affect your company’s reputation.

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