Hello there my lovely readers, peepers and new comers. I promised a little while ago on my twitter that I would create a quick post to help those interested in monitoring their online reputation and protecting their brand.

Well way-hey, that post is finally here. I will say before I go any further, I am not an expert, I have no formal qualification in social media or branding (I do in multimedia). All I have is experience and the wonderful gift our precious Lord gave me in relation to the world wide web and various other digital wonderful things out there. If its made up of pixels, hashtags, ‘packets‘, vectors or some cool but very boring web code …I am usually the go to lady *high 5′s cyber space*.

Ok, so now to the point. Below are three tools I use to monitor my brand. Yes La Sugarlace is not just a blog, its a whole lot more than that, time will reveal the vision so stay tuned.

With so many social media networks around to date, it is becoming increasingly difficult to control information and make sure the info is correct. Things can now go viral within a matter of minutes, meaning you need to stay on top of things in order make sure your brand or name is being portrayed in the right light. Once your brand image is dented, it is very hard and very expensive to turn that negative image around. Prevention is better than cure…

These are tools to be used to monitor your brand, not to stalk others, lets make that clear.

WHAT I USE

1. Twilert this is a free and easy tool to use. You sign up, add the keywords you want to monitor and you will receive updates straight to your inbox, outlining when those keywords are mentioned on twitter and by who. Below is a screen shot of that in action.

One negative is, you will receive ALL tweets that mention your keyword, So if your brand name is your twitter handle, tweets you type yourself and or may already have seen, will be in the alert also.

You can create multiple alerts.

2. Google Alerts. This works in pretty much the same way as Twilert. The difference is, it monitors your brand across Google. So if someone creates a post about your brand and publishes it, Google ‘should’ pick it up and alert you. Example below.

Multiple Alerts can be created.

3. Hootsuite. This is a tool used for the management of social media. You can use this to not only monitor your own brand but also to monitor what is going on within your field. Many people and companies are using Hootsuite now and it is free (paid version also available). It gives you the ability to create multiple streams that you can view all at once. I find this useful at the end of the day, or when something has gone viral and I want to be ‘in the know’ I just create a stream with ‘X’ hashtag and watch it, replying to people I do not follow, as I see fit.

I use this tool for promotion & marketing more than I use it for monitoring my brand. For example, I was doing social media for a company called ‘U Got Jokes‘ a while back. I created multiple streams of various keywords such as ‘comedy’ ‘comedy show’ ‘I love comedy’ etc… I was also able to watch tweets within a specific area. No point watching tweets from those in America when you are trying to promote an event based in the UK, it is highly unlikely they will fly out to attend. I could then promote the event to a specific target market who were actually interested in comedy.

I will not show a print screen of my hootsuite dashboard, ha! If I did that, you would see everything I am monitoring and targeting; I can’t give you all my secrets now can I, I have to be able to maintain my competitive edge, ha!

I hope this was of use to someone out there, and if you have any questions just ask. x

Smooches, love and fabric dolls and gents xxx