Photo courtesy of Herny Bahus
Online reputation management (ORM) companies will hate to hear me say this, but I am going to say it anyway.
Many individuals and companies do not need comprehensive ORM services. In an effort to help these people, I decided to compile a list of free buzz / reputation monitoring tools that will help you develop and protect your priceless reputation. In addition, I included a short summary of each service and whether or not you should use it.
Are you ready to see what the world is saying about you and/or your company?
Rollyo
Rollyo, a user-created search experience, is one of the best ways to monitor your reputation across up-to 25, hand-picked, websites. This is a great option for businesses looking to monitor the top websites in their industry on a low budget.
Even though Rollyo is a great reputation monitoring tool, tracking the top websites in your industry is not the best solution. Many of the negative reviews could start on smaller forums before going mainstream.
Should You Use It? – You should use this to create quick snapshots about what is being said across the top tier websites in your niche – forums, blogs, and news publications.
Twist
I would like you to imagine how great it would be to monitor what people are actually saying about your company during spur of the moment conversations. You would probably think it’s a lot of work and you are right. However, Twist, searches these spur of the moment conversations on the new hot micro-blogging service called Twitter and delivers it in an easy to digest trend graph.
Should You Use It? – This is easily one of my favorite services. There is nothing more desirable than seeing inside a person’s mind… or in this case, inside a crowd of people’s minds.
Lexicon
If you thought Twist was amazing, and it is, you will absolutely love Facebook’s Lexicon. This service tracks the occurrence of certain words on the Facebook wall.
Should You Use It? – Another one of my favorite services – I am addicted to learning what people think.
Google Blog Search
Google Blog Search is the best way to find out what bloggers are saying about you and your company for a specific period of time since they allow you to sort by date and relevance.
Should You Use It? – Use this when trying to coordinate previous product releases and blog articles.
Board Tracker
While Blogging is becoming one of the largest media forms on the internet, there are still important conversations taking place on forums. Board Tracker helps you monitor these conversations and will alert you when your brand or product is mentioned.
Should You Use It? - Use this service when tracking conversations on forums – blogging isn’t the center of the world… yet.
co.mments.com
One of the best ways to find out what real consumers think is by tracking what they write as comments. Co.mments.com is a great service for monitoring the impromptu conversation that takes place on the internet.
Should You Use It? – Yes. Some of the best advice comes from consumers who are being candid in comments of blog posts.
Google News
Google Blogsearch is to Blogs as Google News is to mainstream news. Use this service to track what the mainstream media is saying about your products or company.
Should You Use It? - Use this when tracking the pulse of mainstream media. However, it isn’t the best way to find out what early adapters and individuals think about your brand or product.
Technorati
Technorati is another blog search engine and it allows you to search blog posts by blog categories and tags. For example, Green, has a listing of all blog posts tagged green. In addition, Technorati has a feature called Authority, which helps you judge the importance of the blogs writing about your company.
Should You Use It? – Use this service when you are looking for information about specific categories used in blog posts. For example, if you released a new file sharing service, you would be able to track what bloggers are saying about “file sharing” as a whole.
Blog Pulse
Did you recently launch a marketing campaign for a new product? Well, Blog Pulse offers both trend and conversation tracking. You will be able to see whether there was a jump in your production mentions in blogs or conversations.
Should You Use it? – Use this service when you are trying to discover what early adapters and reviewers are saying about your recent product launch. In addition, this service can be used to assess the impact of a recent marketing campaign.
Any Others?
Do you know of any other free buzz / reputation monitoring tools? Post them in the comments.
{ 1 trackback }