The social media jungle can be very risky for your brand’s reputation. The amount and the speed of tweeting enables users to spread negative messages about your brand in a matter of seconds. Here’s how you can secure your brand name and monitor all the social activity concerning your brand so that you are never too late to respond.

Secure your brand name

There are probably hundreds of social media websites. If you don’t want somebody else to pretend to be you, you must make sure you have registered your brand name in each website. To secure your brand name, I would suggest you to visit KnowEm. This service allows you to check whether your brand name is registered in 120 social media websites. If you want to avoid the hassle of registering in all these websites, you can let KnowEm do it for you (at a cost).

Monitor the social activity around your brand name

The next step is to monitor what is being said about your brand in the social media spectrum. Sounds like a hard task! Well, there are some tools to help you do things faster. I will pick my favorites.
1) Google Alerts: A true classic! Set up an alert for a google search. Whenever there is a new result, you will get an email. Try be specific in your keywords otherwise your inbox will be flooded.
2) Google Blog Search RSS: You can get a custom RSS feed for your query. Whenever there is a new blog post containing your brand name or other keywords you have specified, this feed will be updated.
3) Backtype Alerts: A service that sends you an email alert whenever your brand name is mentioned in a blog comment.
4) Twitter Search RSS: That’s where the real juice is. Twitter. Go to twitter and search for your brand name. You can get the RSS feed for this search so that you can get the latest results in real-time.
5) Real-time social search engines: As everything goes real-time, search engines follow. There are many of them popping up lately. The big hits are socialmention and OneRiot. The complete list is here. In these search engines you can search for your brand name to see the social activity around it in real-time. Most of them offer an RSS feed as well so that you don’t have to press “search” all the time.

What’s next?

Now that you have set up your alerts and feeds, what’s next? Keep a constant eye on them. If you believe you are receiving too much information, maybe you need to filter them a bit more. The key though, is to check them many times during the day. That’s the only way to make sure that if something “bad” comes up regarding your brand, you will be able to respond in time and limit any damages. If your response is fast and successful at the same time, it is even possible that you flip the case to your own benefit.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Blogging has received a lot of buzz in recent years but more recently you’ve probably been hearing about twitter, friendfeed and other micro-blogging platforms. The big difference between traditional blogging and micro-blogging is the character limit, for example twitter limits you to 140 characters. Why would you want to use a service that only lets you post 140 characters at a time? The quick answer is time.

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Popularity: 16% [?]

Last month’s big question “what is twitter” has finally been answered for many out there. Less people are asking google about it. Oprah and Kutcher powered up the buzz for millions of people outside the ring of social media. The chart below shows this spark around mid-April. This trend is cooling down. Here’s the relevant chart from Google Trends.

This downtrend does not, however, seem to affect the actual traffic of twitter since the unique visitors keep increasing. Below is the chart from compete.com.

Now, the big questions are: how many of the ones asking “what is twitter” actually registered on twitter and more importantly how many still tweet?

Popularity: 24% [?]

• The new love affair: Social Media and the Traditional Marketing Mix. Read more: http://bit.ly/Z2iYv #social #marketing #smm #
• Social networking tools add value in a knowledge-rich workplace environment. Proved by NASA. Read at http://bit.ly/BxR0e #social #
• Want to sell online marketing to your boss? You may want to read this: http://bit.ly/2E44C #marketing #smm #social #
• Snipper: where twitter meets code snippets! What’s next? http://bit.ly/Q6Nn9 #social #snippet #
• SEO Concerns When Migrating Your Site http://snipr.com/ieysu moving or updating a site is a great time to have an SEO team. #
• Smiley Tweet searches for happiness and sadness in the twittersphere! http://www.pimpampum.ws/smileytweet #social #twitter #mashup #
• I just added myself to http://twitr.org Twitter Directory under #seo #internet-marketing #social-media #
• Creating Your Social Media Plan http://bit.ly/j8zvG – don’t think about starting your own social media plan without reading this #
• Reading: 7 Reasons Why Social Marketing Improves SEO http://socialmediatoday.com/school/94064 #seo #smm #
• Starbucks Takes its Social Media Marketing Offline http://snipr.com/icewf – way to go starbucks! #
• Reading: Questions You Should Ask About Where Search Is Headed http://tinyurl.com/pk8s9e – real time search is getting more buzz. #
• Just added myself to the http://wefollow.com twitter directory under: #socialmediamarketing, #internetmarketing, #seo #
• New blog post: 4 Search Engines that aren’t Google but are Good! http://bit.ly/17cENn #
• How will Google’s new features impact SEO? http://tinyurl.com/qc9bnv – we’ve offer the adjustments mentioned here and keep evolving our pkgs #
• Try out the new WolframApla knowledge search engine – http://snipr.com/i9gsb – very interesting. #

Popularity: 14% [?]

Social bookmarking has been around for a few years now and has been a great way for people to share and vote on web content. These sites usually let you create an account then submit your favorite blog posts, news stories , pictures, video and just about any other type of media. Then those stories are voted upon by other members of the website. Generally you can see the most recently popular stories on the front page as well as other sorting and categorizing options. Social bookmarking is definitely a great way to find the stories that you are going to be the most interested in. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 20% [?]

Social Networking has become a hot topic lately. No matter where you look, there are blog posts and news articles touting social networking and listing the many and varied benefits of a well done campaign. Few of these articles go beyond the glow and fill you in on the logistics of actually creating a social networking campaign or fill you on in how you should approach social networking and measure its success. There are almost as many theories concerning social media as there are companies that sell the service. We can’t tell you how they do it, but we can tell you how we do.

Here at Eyeflow, our approach is to build a network around a client’s business using existing social networks. The reason we take this approach instead of creating a social network from scratch is because it’s better (read easier, quicker less expensive) to invest our time in attracting people from hubs they already frequent like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter than to try to build someone their own version. Not only is this technique better — it has a much higher ROI and quicker results.
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Popularity: 22% [?]

Without question as of now Google is the king of search engines but with more and more information populating the internet and more and more ways to measure the importance of that information there are more contenders popping up with new ways to search the webs information.

1. Twitter Search
Twitter search allows you to search for the most recent tweets related to the keywords entered into your search. This allows you to see live discussions going on about the topic of your interest.

2. Social Mention
Social mention looks at nearly every type of website there is and gives you a result showing the over all social activity related to your query. Everything from blog posts, bookmarks, tweets, forums, events and more. It then gives the keyword you entered a social score the higher the score the more discussed that topic is throughout the web. The downside to this search engine is since it requires information from a number of outside sources it takes a while to process your results.

3. Kosmix
This search engine takes a much broader approach to its results. Not just showing you a list of links but much more. Depending on your query you may see; maps, videos, Q&A, tweets, related searches, blog posts, images and other related content all on one page. I find this search engine extremely helpful when you want to really do some research. It saves you the time from searching then hitting the back button over and over again.

4. WolframAlpha
The big thing to keep in mind with this brand new search tool is that it considers itself a knowledge engine so don’t expect it to spit back a bunch of web content. Instead this search engine will give you raw information. When typing in your search queries act as if you are talking to a robot that has all the worlds’ information. I recommend referencing the examples page before you start.

All 4 of these search engines offer unique and informative results. Sometimes a Google search just isn’t enough and one of these alternatives may be able to offer you a good second opinion. Happy searching!

Popularity: 38% [?]

• Wolfram Alpha Live Review: The Un-Google http://is.gd/AcJ6 these screenshots really help show how it’s different from Google. #
• Google Blog Search Gets Faster, More Accurate http://snipr.com/i2zbs busy week over at google. #
• Google News Redesign http://snipr.com/i0kj5 – lots of updates from Google this week. #
• Interesting new Google features goes live http://tinyurl.com/qs2qjb #
• Social Media Marketing: Sears and Kmart Step It Up http://tinyurl.com/q6h3gs – good to see companies embrasing social media. #

Popularity: 16% [?]

Yesterday Google announced new search options which can be found in at the top left of your Google results by clicking the “more options” link.  Being someone who’s in the SEO industry I have to take a close look at any changes Google makes and see how this may effect search patterns and effect my clients websites.

The feature that really caught my eye was the Wonder Wheel feature. At first glance I thought “wow this could be a really good keyword research tool” but I had to first understand how it works. Of course Google won’t just tell us so I did a little of my own research. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 22% [?]

• New Google tool lets you learn more about your targeted customers http://snipr.com/hmwm2 – we’ll be using this. #
• Wolfram Alpha: The Next Google? http://tinyurl.com/ptk8jr – it would be good to see a new competitor. #
• What are the factors that go into determining the PageRank of a Twitter page? http://tinyurl.com/pmwex3 – Matt Cutts of Google Answers #
• 3 Ways Companies Sabotage Their SEO Investment http://snipr.com/hkjc3 – #1 we’ve seen that one a lot. #
• Have Pittsburgh Job Seekers and Recruiters Jumped on the Social Media Band Wagon? http://tinyurl.com/ddv58p #
• Conduct Your Own SEO Site Audit – Part 2 http://tinyurl.com/caxd66 #
• Conduct Your Own SEO Site Audit http://is.gd/wXZi #
• Getting Honest About Social Media Marketing http://tinyurl.com/d4nnow #
• 5 Ways to Take Control of Your Personal Brand Today http://snipr.com/hc6e2 #

Popularity: 16% [?]