1. Decide what you want to track

 

What are the primary ‘keywords’ relating to your company that you want to track in online conversations? These are likely to include:

 

• Company name

• Company website address

• Names of products

• Names of senior employees and Directors

• Names of close competitors

• Common expressions – e.g. “[Company] is rubbish”, “company is great”

•  

2. Set up accounts with free social media monitoring tools

 

There are hundreds of tools available. We have listed a few of the most popular ones here:

 

• General mentions – Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts), MonitorThis(www.monitorthis.info)

• Tracking social media – SocialMention (www.socialmention.com), Whostalkin(www.whostalkin.com)

• Blog monitoring – BackType (www.backtype.com) Blogpulse (www.blogpulse.com)

• Monitoring Twitter – Monitter (www.monitter.com) Tweetbeep(www.tweetbeep.com)

• Tracking links – Wholinkstome (www.wholinkstome.com)

• Monitoring forums – BoardTracker (www.boardtracker.com)

• Mentions of senior staff – Naymz (www.naymz.com)

•  

3.  Set up your alerts and searches

 

You then need to run regular searches, or better still, set up alerts or RSS feeds that notify you when your keywords are mentioned. This works best when you have an RSS reader or homepage where you can aggregate all of this information, to make it easier to read and review. We recommend setting up an iGoogle(http://www.google.com/ig) or Netvibes (www.netvibes.com) homepage to display your feeds and alerts.

 

4. Set up your own social media accounts

 

When you’re alerted to a comment about your company, you need to be in a position to respond quickly. The beauty of many of the paid monitoring services is that they provide both the interface (homepage) for your feeds and the ability to respond directly to comments from that same interface. If you’re doing it for free, you need to set up accounts on all the key social media platforms, including: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and any industry-specific or consumer forums where people are likely to talk about your company.

 

5. Engage

 

How you respond to comments and posts people make is up to you, but there are certain rules of thumb:

 

• Act quickly – the beauty of social media is it’s real-time. You can snub out misconceptions and fix problems instantly through a quick, smart reply. Never expect things to go away. Blog posts and forum comments linger in search engine results forever, so you need to make sure your viewpoint is there too.

• Be nice – you really want to avoid getting angry or making threats. Try and reason with detractors and understand where they are coming from. By showing that you’re listening, you’ll win respect and support from others.

• Be pro-active – when discussions arise that relate to your industry, get involved nice and early with your perspective. This encourages promoters to back you and takes the wind out of detractors’ sails.

•  

We hope this is a useful summary.