As user generated content and social media campaigns zoom sky high, so is the possibility -- no, probability -- that people are talking about you and your brand online. Even if you don't have a social media campaign yourself. Good talk or bad -- this is great information to feed into your overall content strategy. Traditionally, your PR firm tracks and manages the publicity. But when the discussion becomes a cloud of voices, and you'd like to maintain your brand and build customer relationships, how do you tackle it all? The answer? Reputation management tools. It's what everyone was talking about yesterday at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. Who needs them? What do they do? Why pay when there are free tools? The free way is to track online chatter manually via Google Alerts, blog searches, Twitter searches, and searching on other social media platforms, such as Digg and Delicious. Another way is to let software to do it for you.Reputation management software may give you additional insight to patterns and frequency of online opinions and discussion -- which can help you provide more valuable content -- and help everyone in your company know how to respond appropriately in the social-sphere. I like it. The reputation management companies represented at the conference were: Crimson HexagonDNA13Radian6 Spiral16 Visible Technologies
Shelly Bowen, MFA, is a content writer, content strategist, and founder of Pybop.
For decades, Shelly has written for businesses on complex topics from disease prevention and medical devices to alternative energy and leveraging data. Today, she's hyper-focused on supporting B-B technology businesses. In her spare time, she hikes, kayaks, draws, and works on her T-Bird.
A wide variety of brands rely on Shelly as an essential freelance writer and content strategy resource.
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