Keeping Track of Those Online Conversations about your brand

Back in the early summer I did a blog post talking about the recent changes in Google so that they focused more in inbound links from the online conversations people are having about your company.

Over time the importance and focus of these conversations will grow, as ultimately they potentially could have an impact on your search engine listings.

So tracking these conversations and responding to them will become part of the daily marketing mix that companies will need to adopt.

Seth Godin launched Brands In Public this week which is a service that tracks all the conversations on one page. This is one of the most sophisticated systems I have seen recently. Really usable and means you can keep track of those conversations across all the different sites.

What this actually demonstrates is that if key individuals such as Seth are setting up business around monitoring the conversations online, then online brand reputation (whether thats personal or a company brand) is a growing marketing. It is currently in it's infancy but is growing at a rapid rate.

It reminds me a lot of when Google launched, and people who adopted the marketing channels early on and used the search engines wisely to grow their business, became market leaders.

Those brands who start thinking about online brand reputation management, embrace the channels and actually start using them to grow the brand awareness, will come out of this recession, stronger and with a competitive advantage which will bode them well for future success.

This isn't just corporate brands but personal brand. For those figures who are in the public eye need to monitor who is saying what about them, but also opportunities where they can get involved in the conversations.

So what are you doing to track your personal or corporate online brand reputation? What are you doing to influence and grow it?

Blogging and your overall marketing strategy

Last week I attended the IoD Director of the Year awards in Leeds. Vernon George, Director of Regions and Branches gave a closing speech. The theme of the speech was 'The Green Shoots of Recovery' and whether there are signs of things improving or not.

I was thrilled (yes really I was) when I visited the IoD blog to find that they had posted an article which reflected the speech. I'd like to think this was a genius piece of strategic marketing, which I am sure it is as the IoD are taking on board the new era marketing channels. So many companies miss this opportunity of engaging with their audience.

To maximise the opportunity, the IoD should have emailed out to all IoD members on Friday saying that Vernon had delivered the speech (amongst other things) - and to continue the conversation online.....that way you would be driving 2,500 members to your blog.

Aligning your online and real world marketing

Ensuring that what is happening correlates with your virtual communications is key to your overall customer engagement. In this instance it allows the people who were at the dinner to engage and continue the discussion (that's if they found the blog post!) .

In the new world of Web 2.0 it's about engaging with your audience through the new channels and building that brand loyalty. Aligning what you are communicating in after dinner speeches, newsletters, or seminars in your online world meas that your audience can be more connected with you.

They can share their opinions on what you have been discussing. Potential customers will be more than likely to purchase your product or service if you are seen as an authority on the subject matter. Therefore aligning your offline and online marketing strategies will only help build your credibility.

So next time you are running a seminar, answering a blog post, asking a question at a Q&A - think about how you can maximise this in your online world to build your online credibility.

Search Engines - Real Time Search

What's the aim of search engines?
The aim of search engines are to deliver relevant results to the user. Over the years the search engines criteria for what 'relevant search' is seems to have converged. Back in the 90s when search engine optimisation started I can remember having different content for Google, MSN and Yahoo as there were such marked differences. The search engines were also very unsophisticated in the manner of their indexing and were easily spoofed by spam.

The Google sandbox
With the use of meta redirects by black hat SEO people and other unscrupulous techniques, Google become un-trusting of new sites. The sandbox was the infamous area in Google where new sites were put until they came of age or proved (by meeting the link and content velocity algorithms) that they were 'trustworthy' to be put main stream.

This completely backfired on them that Christmas 5 years ago when that tsunami hit - and people wanted to donate online, but they couldn't find the sites as they were new and were in the sandbox. So over the past few years the sandbox has been phased out, as it was proven that up to date information was key to delivering relevant results.

Tracking search trends
With the launch of Google trends and insights, we can start tracking the seasonal and cyclical variations in the search patterns on key phrases. So why is thus useful?


Have a look at the example above - I can review my monthly visitor statistics and put them in context, such as 'is the decrease in visitors in August as seasonal variation or does it represent a decrease due to the downturn?'. Which is useful management information when having to report back to clients and line managers.

Puts it in context of the news and other happenings over that period. Google is tracking search trends, so if there's an influx in people searching for a specific information then they need to ensure that they are delivering relevant and up to date information on this.

Real time search results
With the rise in the usage of Twitter and the launch of Bing, meant that for the first time in a era, Google were starting to face stiff competition, not something they have had in a while. More peoople are using Twitter to find out the up to date information / news but not using Google.

With the launch of Google Caffeine, this is a fundamental change in how Google works. They have accelerated the updating of the information from the robots to the search results. I have seen articles that have been published 3 hours ago.

Google is also recognising the different formats of result and you can view the results by web, blogs, review or forums.

How can this boost your SEO?
For search engine optimisation campaign this means quite a lot of change.

1. You need to respond to news in your industry. If it is something that people will be searching for. You need to ensure that you have got a blog post or article on your website with your commentary and response to the news. Whether that's fuel tariffs going up or a response to the budget, if it's information that people are searching for, then you need to make sure your website is at the top of the key phrases people will be searching for.
   
   
2. Comment on other people's blogs on the same subject. Not only will this be another inbound link, but it will be putting your company name in the frame, and boosting your online credibility and authority on the subject matter.
   
   
3. You need to ensure that you have got the metrics and alerts in place to be able to pick up on new trends. Set up your Google alerts around core phrases that people will be searching on and recognise trends early on.
   
   
4. Make sure you have the resource to write the content and get this published PQD, so you have that competitive edge and are first to release content on this.