Want to inspire passionate loyalty among your existing customers and show prospective clients how much you care about the people you work with? A great way to do this is to listen to what people are saying about you on the Web – particularly online reviews – and respond to any complaints or other comments in a flash.
There are some excellent free tools to help you keep your finger on the pulse of your online reputation. Here are a few to try out.
Google Alerts: Setting up email notifications that tell you when you’ve been mentioned on the web is one of the easiest ways to monitor your reputation. Make sure you set up alerts not just for the company name but also for your name and those of other people at your business.
Topsy: Find out who has been tweeting about you by typing your company name into the search box on this site, which claims to have indexed all tweets since 2006. Topsy also lets you search for your photos and videos that have been shared.
Free Review Monitoring: Paid services to track your online reviews can get pricey. This site let you find them for all of your business’s locations on the biggest review sites such as Yelp and Citysearch in one place.
Boardreader: Find out if customers are talking about your company on internet message boards by using the search on this site. Boardreader is a good place to pick up on problems that customers haven’t reported yet to you—so you can solve them immediately.
Have you found any other tools to be particularly effective? Please share any suggestions you have with our readers in the comments box below.