How to Monitor Brand Mentions and Protect Your Reputation
Your reputation is likely the single-most valuable intangible asset you have. It takes time to build credibility with consumers. However, with the click of a mouse, all of that can go away if a damaging user post or misinterpreted comment goes viral. You can't just disregard what people are saying online. It's essential that you know who is talking about you, what they're saying, and where they're saying it.
As we deal with clients on a daily basis who feel swamped by all the digital noise, it is essential to monitor brand mentions for any negative reviews. However, using this tactic for reputation management is not merely for damage control. It is also an opportunity for you to reach out to your most loyal fans and receive honest reviews about your product or service.
Establishing Brand Monitoring Systems
It’s impossible to check your company name on every social media website and every search engine every hour of every day. It is only possible with automation. We suggest starting with the basics. Google Alerts is a free easy-to-use service that will send you an alert every time your brand is mentioned in a piece of content added to Google's database.
To monitor social media, listening software is necessary. Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Mention is used to monitor keywords on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. They help you have all this information in one place. It’s recommended that you monitor your company name, important company executives' names, as well as your exclusive product name. This is to make sure that no information passes you by. If you're unsure how to monitor brand mentions, dedicated software solutions can streamline the process.
Finding Key Brand Mentions
Not all mentions are created equally. A mention from a user with ten followers should be treated differently to a comment on a prominent blog covering the industry or a tweet from a relevant influencer with a checkmark. It’s necessary to separate the signal from the noise.
Start with search engine results that appear on authoritative domains or come from influential accounts. These types of search engine results are the ones that are driving perceptions. At Lumino Digital, we encourage our clients to prioritize the types of mentions they have based on urgency. A customer support issue requires addressing now, for example.
Analyzing Sentiment and Context
It’s very easy to be misled by data. You are getting a lot of mentions and thinking your marketing campaign must be a huge success - and it could all be negative. Sentiment analysis goes into the numbers and looks at the emotion underneath.
Most monitoring platforms have features for automated sentiment analysis, where comments are labeled as positive, negative, or neutral. But it is still necessary for comments to be reviewed manually. Slang and sarcastic comments can be confusing to algorithms. You must take time to view everything. Are consumers complaining about a particular function, or are they fed up with your company values, or is it something else?
Responding to Positive Mentions
While reputation management is often centered on crisis control, it is easy to overlook the positive feedback you receive in the process. When a consumer chooses to take the time to compliment your company, it is important to acknowledge them in order to form a lasting bond. This acknowledges their decision to do business with you and will cause them to continue to share their satisfaction with others.
A simple "thank you" goes a long way. When a user posts a picture of your product, ask for permission to re-publish the image on your official pages. It’s a great means of social proof and lets potential customers know that people love what you're doing. We think that people should use positive voices to fend off negativity.
Controlling the Narrative
Although monitoring is a somewhat reactive process, it is also important to have proactive methods for improving your online presence. This means that you need to ensure that you have quality content that is ranked high on search engines, essentially knocking competing information off page one on Google.
Many brands work with a Wikipedia page creation service to create an article about their company, as a Wikipedia article is one of the most effective ways of gaining authority. A high-ranking website like Wikipedia is a leading source of information on any search engine, which is where anyone carrying out a background check on your business will look.
Although, to gain a listing, strict guidelines must be followed. We have expertise in establishing whether your business satisfies these. If your topic qualifies, we’ll walk you through a process to submit a draft.
