This question came up today in an Online Identity Management course I’m currently attending. Surprisingly, everyone in attendance gave themselves a 5 or a 6 out of 10 for happiness in the way they manage their online brands.
When asked, most, in fact everyone but two individuals, said they use Google Alerts as the one and only tool to monitor mentions of either their names or their sites/blogs.
Yes, Google Alerts can be a powerful tool. No, it is not the one and only tool available. The following is a list of ways you can monitor the online identity of both yourself as an individual, as well as the site/s you manage.
Tools and Resources for Monitoring Online Reputation
-Traffic Analyses
Watching inbound links is a vital part of Online Identity Management. One of the flaws in using Google Alerts alone is that you probably aren’t watching all of the words and keyphrases that you should be watching. In my experience I’ve found that people talking about me or my sites mention things that I never thought about. They may not mention my name, or my domain, or my organization, or my company, but they link to me and quote something I said.
The only way to know what they were saying is to see the link coming in. If the source sends a visit, my stats will show it. If they don’t, I can find the link via WP dashboard, Technorati, or the search engines.
-RSS Feeds
Have you ever sorted through your feed subscribers to see what kind of e-mail address are reading? I recently found a competitor e-mail address being used to subscribe to one of my feeds. I went to the site and found that sure enough, this company had been talking about me, but it was on a page that was nofollowed and they did not link to the page being talked about.
Always know who is watching you.
-Google Alerts
And, of course, Google Alerts is a huge factor in OIM.
-Trackur
Trackur for Online Identity Management is essentially Google Alerts on steroids.
Online reputation monitoring doesn’t have to be a complex, time-consuming task. With Trackur’s sophisticated online reputation monitoring technology, you can easily deploy your own reputation tracking within minutes. You tell us the names, products, and brands that are vital to you and we’ll scour millions of blogs, news sites, images, and videos for you. If your reputation is being discussed in the social media, Trackur will alert you.
Use Trackur to warn you of an attack on your reputation, look for positive press coverage, or even monitor your competition!
If you’re serious about maintaining a constant watch on your online identity, you’ll want to use the above tools. If you use the above tools on a regular basis, you should be able to stay in the know with regards to your online presence.
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I use a combination of Google Alerts, referral checks on my site logs and the occasional self-search to see what comes up.