What are people saying about you?

How do you know what people are saying about your brand? Do you even know if people have posted negative things about your business?

Know when people are talking about you

Google Alerts lets you monitor search terms. You can set the search terms to be  your company name or your products names. When Google discovers a blog post, news feed, web page, or video/audio file with your chosen search term mentioned, you will get an email.

Write a blog and make it easy for people to comment

There are many companies that are scared to blog. If  you are one of these, you need to not be scared. When you blog, you can get feedback – good, bad, indifferent – either way you get feedback.

Use the search engines

You should check the different search engines regularly for  a keyword search on your company, and/or products. You will get different results from each search engine and also different formats (web pages, audio, images, video).

Set up social media profiles

Use social media to start  a conversation directly with your customers. With social media, you are able to write about niche subjects, about your products and services you provide. As long as you are adding real value to the conversation, most people should respond positively.

Some of the best social networking websites are: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, and Squidoo.

By using some of the examples above, you can find out what people think about your company and products or services and help you to create new customers and build new relationships. If you find negative comments about your company, you have the ability to reply and fix the issue before it grows.