Find Out When People Are Talking About You

Attention business owners new to internet marketing – did you know you can find out when people are talking about you? It’s true, and it’s not some sort of sinister secret government listening program. There are a compilation of free tools that anyone can use to track mentions of their business name (or anything else for that matter) online.

First, before I start breaking down my favorite tracking tools, here’s what you need to know about the technology:

“Tracking” is nothing more than looking for a certain keyword using a specialized search engine. If you decide to track all mentions of the keyword “bonanza“, one of the tools below will keep an eye on news wires, blogs, forums, twitter – basically the entire internet – for any mention. When someone uses the word bonanza in a blog post, news report, twitter post, forum post, web page (the list goes on and on) you will be sent an alert. These alerts can be configured to be sent instantly, but most people should probably opt for daily summaries.

In one sentence. Tracking tools follow the entire internet for your word or phrase and tell you when someone uses it. Powerful stuff. Here are my favorites:

Filtrbox – In a word, WOW. Filtrbox offers a free version of their service that allows you track up to five different names or phrases using a fairly sophisticated interface. I’ve setup a Filtrbox account to track mentions of my personal name, and Filtrbox is smart enough to allow me to exclude the domain name “LancasterOnline.com” from my results. Wondering why that’s a good thing? Any mentions of word “Jason” on the website “Lancaster Online” would result in an alert otherwise. Slick. Filtrbox is free for up to five “filters” (alerts), so go check it out.

Yahoo News Alerts – Much more basic than Trackle, Yahoo News alerts allow you to request an alert at any mention of your keyword (“bonanza” in my example). Yahoo’s news wire is comprehensive, so when you subscribe you’ll often get alerts about international mentions of your keyword. This might not seem like a benefit, but if you’re following an international company and/or service, this is key.

Google Alerts – This is the standby recommendation of every marketing and PR person, and while I agree, I think most business owners will get more out of Trackle. Still, if you’re serious about staying on top of something, it makes sense to subscribe to Google alerts in addition to Yahoo News and Trackle.

What about those of you who don’t like daily email alerts? Check out a tool called Addictomatic.

Rather than request an alert, you can visit the site, type in your keyword, and then bookmark the results page. Every time you visit that bookmark, Addictomatic automatically pulls the latest news and information about your keyword(s).

In case you haven’t guessed it by now, you can use all of these tools for more than just finding out when people talk about you. I use them all for reputation management, link building, search engine optimization, and networking.

If you only do one of the things on this list, take the time to setup a Filtrbox account. It’s fairly comprehensive and easy to configure, and a great way to introduce yourself to the concept.