Conversations and Comments About Your Business

Once you get your business established on the internet and get connected to your social media sites, people will start talking about your business.  You have to know how to monitor the conversations and know when it is appropriate to join the discussion.  There are some simple ways that you can use right away in order to find the conversations and comments and learn what people are saying about you.

1. Set Up Google Alerts - Google Alerts are free email notifications from Google search results on any subject that you want to track.  For example, you can set it to track your business name and the names of your competitors.  Each time Google adds something to its index that matches the terms you are tracking, you will receive an immediate notification in your email that contains a link to the page that contains it, allowing you to find the comment or conversation.
2. Search Twitter – You can search Twitter for real-time results from their home page or by being signed into your account.  Search for your business name and save your search to Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic in order to monitor the conversations any time your business name is mentioned.  You can also do you search in Bing, which now indexes Twitter updates.
3. Search Facebook – Use the search box at the top right of any Facebook page to search for your business name to see who is talking about your business and what they are saying.
4. Use Your Analytics Data – Google Analytics is a free service that can help you to keep track of your web site traffic and tell you where your site traffic is coming from.  For example, if the most traffic is coming Twitter, that is where you should concentrate your efforts in joining the discussion.

These simple steps can tell you important details like how your customers feel about your products and the service you give them.  If you are using these methods currently, tell us how they are working for you.