Monitor Your Online Brand Like the Pros

Navigating the concourse of online marketing and branding can be like charting a course through the Bermuda Triangle without a compass—which of course has proven difficult on occasion even when using a compass.

Simply put, a brand can be anything from a name, sign, term or symbol. Business owners quite often forget the goal is to differentiate their products and services from those of other sellers. Why? Because branding takes place in the mind of the consumer.

Thus, a branding campaign isn't about getting the consumer to choose your product or service over the competition, but it's about influencing your prospects in a way they come to see you as the only solution-provider to their problem. This way, you don't have to make the mistake of downgrading the competition. Your brand's integrity should be able to speak for itself.

 Effective branding should:

• Deliver a clear message about how your product or service can solve their problem
• Make your product or service credible in the consumer's mind
• Tap into your prospect's emotional center
• Motivate your prospects to become buyers
• Create user loyalty

Managing your brand is critical to business success. Think in terms that managing equals monitoring! One of the simplest ways of monitoring what people think and say about your brand is to create Google Alerts so that an email will be sent anytime your brand name is mentioned.

Monitor Your Online Brand Through Smart Keyword Selection

Every name associated with your brand, clients, competitors, products, misspellings, typos, company name, abbreviations or initials are smart keyword selections that a Google alert can easily monitor.

Best Places to Monitor Your Online Brand

Now that your keywords are in place, the next step is to monitor the places where your brand is likely to show up, which may include blogs, Twitter, social media networks and sites, Wikipedia, forums, threads, blog comments, forums, article, and video or photo sites. Starting to get the picture?

If you have a product or service to offer and you want prospects to become loyal customers, perhaps it's time to get on the branding wagon.

What tools or tactics are you using to monitor your brand? Tell us about it by commenting below.