Do you know? It’s important to monitor the pulse of conversation about your brand, products and industry to stay up to date and respond when needed. But tracking what others are saying about your business can also boost your bottom line. Say you run a restaurant in Hartford, CT. You’ve set up tracking for keywords related to food, dining out, etc. in your area. During your daily monitoring, you find three people who have posted that they are looking for a place to eat in Hartford while visiting their families over the holidays. Send them a quick response about your restaurant or promise them a 10% discount and chances are you’ll have three more parties booked at your place.

No matter what your business is, chances are people are looking for your product or services. By devoting a few minutes each day to tracking conversations, you can then act and connect with potential customers at little cost to you. Three of our favorite free tracking tools are:

• Google Alerts – Set up alerts for mentions of your company, CEO, competitors, industry keywords, etc. Google will monitor the web for new mentions of these keywords and send a compiled list of results to your inbox.
• Social Mention – Social Mention is a search engine that monitors user-generated content at over 100 social media outlets including blogs, comments, videos, Twitter, Facebook, etc. You can set up daily alerts or conduct keyword searches as needed.
• Search.Twitter.com – Helps you filter Twitter searches in real-time so that you can better interact with your audience.
• More advanced services are also available for low monthly fees. One example is Trackur, which has packages starting at $18 / month.

Start listening – for news about a competitor’s launch, a recent customer’s comment about your business or a potential business opportunity. You may be surprised by what you hear (or read).

So, what are people saying about you?

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