Posted by Molly Nelson - You most likely have a Web site for your business. You may also have a blog, or even be active on Twitter. While putting your business out there is a great first step, listening (and responding) to what your customers are saying about your business is just as important.
If you're interested in hearing the chatter about your business, there are numerous tools to help you do so.
- Google Alerts are a good place to start. Enter search terms like the name of your business or other keywords, specify how often you would like to receive e-mail alerts containing your search results, then sit back and let the power of Google search the interwebs for you.
- If you tweet, be sure to take advantage of Twitter search. You can search for mentions of your Twitter handle, hashtags or other terms. Instead of having to enter your search terms each day, we've found it convenient to add Twitter searches as RSS feeds to an RSS feed reader. If you would prefer to be notified of your mentions on Twitter by e-mail or SMS text, a service like Pingie might be for you.
- I'm going to assume you've Googled your business before to see what comes up, but if you haven't yet searched for your business on Yelp, go look for it right now - don't worry, we'll be here when you get back. Not only does Yelp show you what customers are saying (or not saying) about your business, Yelp also provides you with a free Yelp for Business Owners account, which allows you to "claim" your business page, update information, and privately message customers to respond to questions or address problems.
- This Inc. Technology article highlights a few other monitoring services, some free like Trackle and others that do charge a monthly fee, but provide more robust monitoring and analytics.
So what are you waiting for, get out there and start listening!