It doesn’t matter if your a mom and pop shoe company (like the one on my favorite show Seinfeld), or a mega brand like Kodak, it’s essential to know what people are saying about you online. Word of mouth can make your business spread like wildfire or it can cause it to go up in smoke and disappear overnight.
At Taz Solutions, here is exactly what we do: we leverage free web tools to tell us every time our company name is mentioned. We then visit the different sites and networks those comments were made on and read them and or respond to them if it makes sense. Our Chief Branding Strategist was browsing Twitter one afternoon and notices a tweet that said “why is Taz Solutions never open when I need them”? She instantly followed up the client and posted a response tweet “Taz Solutions is open during our normal business hours M-F 9-5 with someone on call 24/7.
Yes we went on the defensive a bit, but I had a deeper concern — that client. The cost of getting a new client is much much higher then keeping a current one, so I wanted to make sure that client was taken care of.
Be proactive — it’s your brand out there. I’ve seen too many cases where Brands have had their butts kicked by an angry customer.
Here are a few of the tools we leverage to audit our online brand:
- Google Alerts (program in all the different search phrases/keywords you want to be notified on)
- AllTop.com
- SPY
- Search.Twitter.com
