A Reputation that took decades to build can be threatened by a single event.  Your company’s reputation is the cornerstone of your business.  Xcite Media Group will help you not only to establish your online reputation, but help you monitor and build upon it as well.

Social media monitoring. Reputation monitoring. Buzz monitoring. Call it what you want, but it’s all the rage. All the cool kids are doing it! However, friends don’t let friends monitor social media without first teaching them a couple of critical steps that most companies overlook.

Your reputation is what you say about yourself and what others say about you. Managing your reputation is nothing new. Every business has been doing it for as long as businesses have existed. What’s new is how the Internet and social applications have changed the way reputations spread. Remember the movie Outbreak? Remember how they kept asking, “How contagious is the virus?” and “Is the virus airborne?” For small and medium businesses today, reputation is airborne and contagious.

Don’t start any kind of online monitoring effort until you’ve worked through these important steps. Ignore them, and you’re setting yourself up for failure.

1. Understand Your Goals

Just because you can monitor everything that’s being said about your brand online, doesn’t mean you should just jump in, without setting clear goals. That’s the monitoring equivalent of hanging out at an open bar–you’ll quickly get dizzy and will end up with a major headache!

Take the time now, to write down what your goals are for your social media monitoring campaign. Are you trying to better understand how Twitter users talk about your products? Are looking to measure the success of your new viral marketing campaign? Or, perhaps you suspect a rogue employee is sharing too many company secrets.

We talk a lot about “monitoring” social media, but you also need to “measure” the information you collect. You can’t do that without first defining your goals!

2. Know What to Monitor

Now you know your goals, you need to determine what exactly do you plan to monitor on the web.  Your company name? That’s a given, right? Your CEO’s name? Check! Depending on your goals, you might also consider the following:

• Your product brands – iPhone, Android, Windows, Fiesta, and Motrin are all buzz-worthy products.
• Popular company employees – are they saying too much?
• Your trademarks – watch for infringement
• Super secret products – the ones you worry might leak to the web
• TV and Radio slogans – is that cute jingle resonating with your audience?
• Marquee Clients, Your CEO, Your Company Name, Misspellings, Critics, Retired Brands, Unhappy Clients, Investors, Industry Trends, Former Employees, Competitors, Future