Feedback loop
What if you could wire the world to let you listen in any time someone mentioned your brand in conversation, for good, for bad, or otherwise? That could be helpful, right? Well, if the conversation is happening on the Internet, you can do such things pretty easily.
I submit proof in the form of a two-item list:
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Set up Google Alerts to monitor key phrases related to your brand.
Google will email you or ping your feed reader every time it indexes any reference to the phrase you’ve entered. Make sure you’re using any variation of your name (we monitor “Electric Pulp,” electricpulp, and EPulp) or any other relevant phrase. Just understand this is Google, and Google indexes a lot of pages. If you set up an alert for “awesome,” for instance, the Internet may explode. -
Set up a Twitter Search and subscribe to the RSS.
Same theory here as before, except you’re now zooming in on a specific community. This will turn up posts Google will never index, and will do it much more quickly. Once you’ve set up your search, just subscribe to the “Feed for this query” and twitter will do the rest.
The only thing left to do is participate in these conversations as they’re happening. Leave comments on posts. Reply to twitters. Et cetera.
If this seems somehow narcissistic or big brotherly (in the creepy sense), just remember consumers hit the search engines before they buy. And they’re going to find all of these conversations, whether you’re in the mix or not. You want it to be the former.