How To Monitor Your Brand On Twitter – Twitter University

When I first heard all the hype about Twitter I thought it was a huge waste of time. Most of the posts that I saw were either blatant promotional pitches or updates on the personal lives of people I’ve never met. On a whim I used the Twitter Search tool to search for my name and my website name.

I was shocked at what I discovered. People were talking about my company on Twitter and I didn’t even realize it!

“Remember that when someone tweets about your business they are letting their entire list of followers know about their experience. If you’re not at least monitoring the conversation you run the risk of not supporting your champions and also letting your critics make negative claims about your business that go unchallenged. ”

One particular example was a woman who had tweeted that she was considering joining EvanCarmichael.com as an author and wanted to know if it was worth the time investment. I quickly signed up a Twitter account, replied to her and before I knew it she signed up an account! Had I not been on Twitter I would have missed the opportunity to connect with this customer.

Ever since that first interaction I’ve been monitoring what people say about my company. Usually it’s people saying how they enjoy it and it’s a great resource for entrepreneurs. I typically then write back thanking the person for their comment and acknowledging them.

Here is a recent example that came in today:

I have no idea who MonsterMillion is but he/she took time out of the day to promote my site to the thousands of people who are MonsterMillion followers and I wanted to let him/her know that I appreciate it. These type of comments come in every day and I usually reply to each one with a short tweet to let them know that I value their kind words. So far nothing negative has come in yet but if / when it does I’ll know about it and will be able to respond.

How to Monitor Your Brand on Twitter

Here is how you can quickly and easily keep track of what people are saying about your and your business.

1) Go to Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/) and put in your name. You can repeat the process later for your company name and, if you’re a real keener, put in your key customer names and congratulate them when they get positive Twitter mentions.

You’ll then see the results in a format like this:

2) Subscribe to the Feed. At the top right of the page you may notice the link that says “Feed for this query” – if you click on it you’ll be able to see the RSS feed for all the Twitter posts that contain your name. If you currently have a RSS reader then it’s a great way to be instantly notified whenever you get mentioned in a Twitter post.

3) Check Your Feed Regularly. I check my RSS feed on a daily basis (I use Google Reader) so it’s easy for me to quickly find out which new conversations have started up around my name and my company. You want to check in on a regular basis to quickly acknowledge people who are helping to promote you for free and to help out any users who are having questions or problems with your business.

Remember that when someone tweets about your business they are letting their entire list of followers know about their experience. It’s all in the public domain and if you’re not at least monitoring the conversation you run the risk of not supporting your champions and also letting your critics make negative claims about your business that go unchallenged. Twitter results are also starting to pop up in the search engines which gives you all the more reason to get involved and protect your online brand.

I hope I have at least convinced you to monitor your brand on Twitter. You’ll soon find yourself getting more and more involved as you connect directly with your customers.

Do you monitor your brand on Twitter? What experiences have you had?