Five tools to protect your online reputation

What can a business owner do to make sure their reputation stays positive? When it comes to tracking your online reputation, many people think they need a social media monitoring tool. While those tools are handy, that’s not the only way to find out what people are saying about your company.

The following five tips should help you avert a reputation crisis:

1. Set up Google Alerts: Signing up for free Google Alerts allows you to receive notifications every time your predefined keywords are mentioned on the Internet. You can control the frequency of email notifications as well.
2. Search yourself: How often do you conduct simple online searches for yourself or company? Make a point to conduct these searches regularly. Don’t just perform a general web search. Perform a news search as well.
3. Maintain communication: This is where you may need to make an apology or thank someone. If a client takes the time to write something nice about your company, take some time yourself to thank them and tell them how much it means. If someone is disgruntled, try to find out why and what you can do.
4. Social Mention: Enter your brand or company name into SocialMention and it will pull results from across the Internet (blogs, social media, news, etc.) and breaks them down by various analysis points. You can also sign up for their email alerts.
5. Glass Door: Glassdoor.com includes anonymous reviews and ratings of a company written by employees and former employees.

Doing these things should help your online reputation. If nothing else, they will help keep you aware of what is going on in online communities.