Ifttt: Reputation Management and Social Monitoring Made Easy

By Gary-Adam Shannon at SearchEngineWatch:
Monitoring your brand online is getting simpler and simpler by the day. It's becoming clear that hiring a reputation management firm not only is a wasted expense but something your in-house marketing team can do itself if trained in the right tools and methodologies.
After all, why spend money on defending a brand when you can spend money promoting a brand? Unfortunately for the unsuspecting client, there are some reputation management companies that are nothing more than snake oil salesmen who over promise and under deliver and in return drain your business of critical capital.
Let me introduce you to some of my favorite new online reputation management killer apps that are of an immeasurable value.

The first tool that is a pretty new application or startup is ifttt - if this then that. Simply, ifttt is a robust and powerful social media scripting suite.
When a user joins the site they can select from pre-made recipes or create their own tasks to monitor their brand online.
If you’re just starting to monitor your brand online, the following simple tasks will help you monitor your name and also allow you to broadcast updates to multiple social media platforms, keeping everything up to date and in sync.

• Twitter Brand Monitoring: Just replace "MyCompany" with your company name or brand name and you will receive instant email notifications every time someone mentions the brand on Twitter.
• Synchronize Your Facebook & Twitter Profile Pictures: Every time you change your Facebook profile picture, your Twitter account will now update too – saving you time and keeping this up to date.
• Engage Your Twitter Followers Immediately: This simple recipe will engage your Twitter followers and thank them every time they mention your Twitter username. This helps give life to your Twitter account so you don't need to spend an exhaustive amount of hours keeping it up to date.
• Follow Back: Building your Twitter profile couldn't be easier. Every time someone follows you, follow them back!
• Sync Your Tumblr to Twitter: This simple recipe takes any new post on your Tumblr blog and immediately sends it to Twitter to be displayed as a link back to your Tumblr blog.

Use Google Alerts

Google Alerts will let you see what is happening on Google instantly and send you an email. You can configure this to be sent once a day or as it happens. This is useful to monitor the content being represented online to customers.

Advertise

Engaging in a online marketing campaign if you aren't already can be one of the best ways to combat negative brand mentions online.
Rather than devote a large chunk of change to outsourcing to brand monitoring companies, you employ the methods mentioned above and cut to the chase and begin a extensive online marketing push that helps build your company brand and protect it from unfavorable results whilst also driving (hopefully) a successful revenue generating campaign.
Using AdWords and engaging the right search marketing companies or an internal team is the easiest way to make this happen.

Is it a Real Issue?

If your customers have a problem with your brand or said allegations are true, then clear them up. No amount of sugarcoating can ever sweeten a rotting apple. Your best marketing is happy customers with happy referrals.
If your brand’s negative issue or mention online is a verified and actual problem, then combat it up front and sort it out. No amount of hiding or masking can ever fix a brand which has fatally flawed issues; word of mouth marketing by happy customers and happy references are the key to success.