Posted by Ray White on January 4, 2010 Comments (1)

You know what you do for your brand. You spend hours upon hours developing your brand and building a good reputation. Question is, what are OTHERS saying about your brand? Are other people singing your praises? Or are they out to ruin you?

Your brand is your reputation. It is your main selling tool. It is what distinguishes you from the rest of the herd. Most small towns have a grapevine where you find out really quick who is saying what behind your back. But how do you know when someone has posted something about you on the internet? You need to know when that happens. A gracious thank you may be in order for that great review one of your customers posted on her blog. Or you may need to do some major damage control when someone posts an unfair rant about your service in a forum. You want to encourage and foster goodwill about your products and services. Most importantly, you want to protect your reputation. You can’t do that unless you know what is being said about you.

It’s easy to find out what information is being published about you on the web with Google Alerts. It’s free even. And you don’t need a Google account to use them. You choose terms for Google to look for in web pages, such as your name, business name, or domain. You will get an email to let you know when something new comes up for each term that you set up. You control what they look for, and how often they tell you.

To set up your alerts with Google takes just a few minutes. You pick the term you want searched, make a few selections from drop-down menus, and you’re done. We will go over some of the choices on the form in some detail in future posts.