How to Use Google Alerts and Hootsuite to Monitor Your Online Reputation

In last weeks article I explained why it's important to monitor your online reputation and in this article, I'm going to show you how you can do this using two of my favourite, free to use tools; Google Alerts and Hootsuite.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free and easy-to-use tool that makes is extremely easy to track your online reputation.
​
First of all, head over to Google Alerts and login to your Google account or create one if you don't already have one.

Then, create a Google Alert for your name/your business name and your website URL.

You'll be given options to choose how often results are sent to you, you should ideally check this daily but once a week is a good starting point.

Be sure to choose 'All sources', 'Any region' and 'All results' from the available options.

Now create your alert.

Using the information from your alerts and the guidance in last weeks article you can now effectively monitor and manage your online reputation.

You can create Google Alerts for a number of things. Why not create an alert for your main competitor so that you can keep track of their movements and their reputation, using this to your advantage?

You should also create an alert for your industry sector and any relevant topics/keywords which can help you to stay on top of the latest trends and is a useful way to build content for your social media channels.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an amazing social media tool. It allows you to easily monitor your social media channels, schedule posts into the future, reply to messages and source new content - all without leaving the application. The best part? It's free and easy to use!

First of all, you need to head over to Hootsuite and either login or create a free account.

Once you've connected your relevant social media accounts to HootSuite you simply need to create various search streams.

To do this, click 'Add Stream' from the home dashboard and working through your list of social media channels click the 'Search' tab. As with Google Alerts, you can create searches for your name/business name and your URL, as well as for your competition and any keywords relevant to your business.

This will enable you to keep track of any positive or negative comments circulating about you or your business throughout the social world, whilst also keeping a close eye on your competition.

Your next step, if you haven't done so already is to add more streams so that you can see all incoming messages, posts and tweets to your social media profiles making it easy to track customer comments and respond to potential customers quickly.

There's one final thing that I forgot to mention last week... don't worry. One bad review isn't going to mean the end of all of your hard work. It's true that some people just won't like what you're offering, no matter how hard you try, but the important thing is that you are aware of what people are saying and you're prepared to take the right course of action.

---

You now have all the tools and guidance you need to begin monitoring and protecting your online reputation.

However, if you feel that you do need greater assistance with your social media presence or reputation management please do feel free to get in touch by emailing us at: [email protected] or visit our Social Media Management page to find out how we can help.