MIKESTOPFORTH

MarketingProfs has a great thread of 23 things to track online if you give a damn what people are saying about your company, brand, employees or even you…

Here they are for your reading pleasure:

1. Company name (in Google, BlogPulse, Technorati, etc.)

2. Company URL

3. Public facing figures

4. Product names

5. Product URLs

6. The industry “hang outs”

7. Employee activity/blogs

8. Conversations

9. Brand image

10. Competitors

11. Images/video like YouTube and Flickr

12. Tags and Social search tools like Del.icio.us

13. Social Voting tools like Digg and Techmeme

14. “Advanced Listening”

15. Feedback URL and link threads

16. “Voice of the Customer” log to track sentiment, instance, and/or voice

17. Develop new roles such “Brand Monitor” or “Blogosphere Watcher”

18. Self-clipping services like Google or Yahoo alerts for keyword mentions, but also audio and video hits as well…services like PodZinger for example to ascertain conversational audio levels

19. Utilize RSS and aggregators like Bloglines in order to aggregate, integrate and assimilate all relevant incoming and outgoing moments of truth (perceived truth perhaps, or even truthiness according to Rob Stevens)

20. Use wikis like PmWiki to discuss and debate pretty much everything from 1-19 and most importantly attempt to turn all the talk/conversation into walk/action

21. (ending on 20 would have been so contrived) Repeat steps 1-20 to look outside of your own circle. Evolve the perspective from yourself, through your direct competitive set to your indirect competitive set and ultimately to your aspirational/non-endemic/non-competitive set. This is where you want to follow the leaders so to speak – Apples, Nikes, Googles or whichever company you admire

22. Create a PROACTIVE capability/budget in order to QUICKLY execute against everything you’re monitoring – specifically opportunities like Fedex Furniture, Tiger Chipping in on the 16th

23. Conversely, have a REACTIVE process in place to comprehensively and compellingly respond, especially when you’re on the bumpy receiving end of the stick

There are others specifically for the South African application – and just like that I had an idea for a future post. Besides, don’t want to give it all away, gotta earn money somehow.