Posted by on July 19th, 2010 View Comments
Posted in Link Building Overview |
Monitoring your brand is a very tricky task to do especially in today’s digital age. With millions of people logging in and using the Internet every day, the exchanges in information is just so fast that it is sometimes overwhelming. Especially if you are just a start-up building up your brand, the Internet is a very useful tool that can make or break the success for your company.
There are websites all over the web that specialize in helping individuals and/or businesses manage their reputations and brand. Some of these rep companies even go so far as to manage the names of some top executives of big businesses online. As far as reputations go, managing them is all a part of the grand scheme of SEO and link building.
Monitoring your brand today has become relatively easier thanks to the development of several tools, aside from the rep management companies, that are catered into doing just that: monitor your brand. This way, you can do the rep management yourself and see what users and customers are saying about your product, service or the whole company.
This also presents a great opportunity for your link building campaign. If you find something like a nice review or criticism of your company, you can directly contact the websites involved in order for you to get links from them. These are the most natural links you can get to aid in your link building plans. Taking advantage of them may be the most sensible step you can take in your link building campaign.
Here are some recommended tools that can help you monitor your brand and find those precious link building opportunities around the Internet:
• Trackur
Andy Beal developed Trackur as a full-fledged, brand monitoring service. Users can usually avail of Trackur’s free version and have one of their search queries saved and monitored regularly. The results give you info about certain keywords and phrases you are following about your brand. Trackur is always updated and gives its users info from sources like news sites, blogs, and Twitter updates.
• Replyz
Replyz is a real-time search engine. It delivers the latest results and answers to queries from those who want to learn something about a particular topic or trend. Using this service, customers are given real-time streams about hot keywords and phrases that may be helpful to their link building strategies.
Not only that, Replyz automatically updates you whenever there’s a question posted that is related to the keywords you are monitoring. It updates your dashboard and you can directly answer them there also. By reaching out to these customers, you can establish an instant relationship and may even snag some valuable links along the way.
• Openbook, Google Alerts, and Social Mention
The first two basically offers the same service albeit on vastly different scales. Openbook is basically a service you can use to search and monitor your brand in Facebook. With Openbook, you can establish links by inviting and being confirmed by people. Once you’ve entered an individual’s circle of friends, then this will present a massive opportunity for you to market your brand to them.
Google Alerts, on the other hand, is more catered to the whole Internet. Google Alerts basically updates the users about the latest info and news about his particular brand or the other keywords and phrases being followed. The brand mentions and reviews that Google Alerts provide are valuable to any company’s link building campaigns.
Lastly, Social Mention is very much like Google Alerts. The only difference is that this service is more catered specifically to social media. The websites that Social Mention monitors include Identica, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Photobucket, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, and other networking sites.
• Whos Talkin
Whos Talking is somewhat a complimentary service to the likes of Social Mention. Whos Talkin searches blogs, news feeds, networks, videos, images, forums, and tags for relevant info with regards to the brand or keywords you are monitoring.
Not only does this service provide you with link building opportunities, it also enables you to gauge the competition ad see how they are doing in your market. You can make adjustments according to what your competition is doing and stay always ahead of the game.
