Sticks and Stones Will Break Your Bones, But Names Will Never Hurt You

By Murray Newlands, Director and Co-Founder, Monitoring Social Media


Who cares what people say about you? You do a great job for your customers, and people who know you professionally and personally know that you run an outstanding company, right?

Do you use Yelp? Why do you use it? Because what people say about you matters. Creating and managing an online reputation is an essential part of protecting your company's brand.


Here are some tips for creating and managing your brand:

Create social media profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter that include your company's name. Those social network websites rank well in Google, so when someone searches for your company, they see content that you have written and that you control. Secondly, if existing customers, potential customers, and press research your company they will see your online communities and recognize that you care enough about your customers to engage with them directly. (Note to self: Make sure these social media channels are active, otherwise it appears that you do not care to engage!)

Link from your company's website to your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter profiles. Doing this helps to tell people where and how they can communicate with you. It also increases the likelihood of these sites ranking well on Google.

Engage with bloggers who blog about your company! Commenting on their blog posts, (thanking them, answering questions they may have raised, suggesting related products, etc.) can also create content that will show up when people are searching for your company.

Monitor what people are saying about your company. Staff, products and competitors can give you great insights into things you are doing well, things you are doing badly, and things that you can do and say differently. Suppose you do not know that people are calling your company names and no one tells you? How would you know you needed to do something about it? The simple way is to set up listening software, such as Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts. This software program will email you a notice when someone mentions your name or company. Google Alerts is free and easy to use. It does, however, have its limitations. Increasingly, companies want more reliable and sophisticated monitoring solutions that will be capable of monitoring social media sites, like Twitter and Facebook, in real-time. Several companies provide those real-time solutions. They are: Brand Watch, Constant Contact, Radian 6, and Marchex.

Do you know who is calling you names right now? And if those negative comments will show up when people search for information about your company? Need help finding out more? Come to Monitoring Social Media (San Francisco) on October 21-22 and hear Pierre Zarokian speak on these very issues. You can also following the Twitter feeds of Murray Newlands: @murrynewlands or Pierre Zarokian @submitexpress.