What’s the buzz? Using reputation monitoring to improve your website

Everyone is talking about ‘buzz’, in fact as someone said, there’s a buzz about buzz. But, what is it and what can it do for you?

In the age of the social web not only does everyone have an opinion but often they are publishing it online. Buzz (or reputation) monitoring is the activity of tracking those online conversations about your brand. Google Alerts is one of a growing number of free tools that can help you keep your eye on the ball. It’s a good place to start out your monitoring endeavours.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts sends you an email whenever there are new google results for your search terms. You can set up any number of alerts, for example; your company name, ‘electric putty’, a competitors name ‘other web company’ or for a topic ‘web design for third sector organisations’. You can set your alerts to be received once a day or as they happen.

Tracking your company name will give you an insight to your reputation online, if you don’t get any alerts it is an indication that you don’t have a reputation. In this case you’ll have to decide if there really is ‘no such thing as bad publicity’! I hate to use the word spying but keeping an eye on what your competitors are up to and what people are saying about them can also prove fruitful. Tracking topics of interest to you can provide you with intelligence and insight and can be useful if you are responsible for generating content such as news stories or opinion.

Buzz and your website

After monitoring should come managing, now you know what is being said you need to act on it.

Some of this comes down to good old PR and publicity but information will arise that can help you make decisions about how to use your site effectively.

Here's some examples of what you could discover;

1. People are commenting positively about a service you provide that isn’t highlighted on your site. By making this content more prominent you could increase the number of people using your service.
2. Your competitors are publishing useful content on their site that you aren’t. Including similar but better written information on your own site can it more ’sticky’, earning you repeat visitors and credibility.
3. You gain a greater understanding of peoples views and beliefs around a particular topic of interest. You can use this to write more informed news stories on your site, establishing your organisation as a resource for knowledgeable, trustworthy information.

As buzz monitoring becomes more established and more tools become available there will really be no excuse for not knowing what conversations are taking place and taking action to improve the users experience of your site. The next post will discuss using Twitter for buzz monitoring.

Categories: Strategy | Online tools

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