Do you know what people are saying about you on the Internet?

Even if you don’t have a Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter page, as a small business owner, you should monitor everything that is said about you.

Why? If someone makes a positive or negative comment about your business, don’t you want to know? Companies that don’t monitor their exposure are liable to loose their market share.  Take a look at companies like Domino’s Pizza when staff members posted a Youtube video that negatively reflected the company.  It took the company’s CEO nearly three days to respond.  If someone says something about your company, you need to react immediately to alleviate any negatively.

There are lots of ways to monitor your presence, both free and through paid services.  These services track social media sites, shows you what people are saying about your product or service, offers real-time metrics for buzz volume, and even tracks what your competitors are doing too. Most of them track more than 100 million blogs, social networking sites, microblogs and forums.

To help you weed through the clutter, here are some of the popular paid and free services available:

Paid:

• Radian 6 – starts at $600 a month.
• Cision Social Media Monitoring – starts at $375 a month
• CustomScoop: Cost: based on key words needed, how many users, $299-Standard 1 user: 15 key words, 30 day archive $499 unlimited key words 3 users, $999 unlimited.
• Scout Labs: Cost:$249-5 searches, 5 users, 6 months historical data $449-10 searches, 5 users, 6 months historical data $749- 25 searches, 5 users, 6 months historical data
• Vocus: Cost: $3,000 for small business edition
• Rowfeeder: Cost $250 a month to start

Free:

• Google alerts
• Addict-O-Matic
• Backtype.com
• IceRocket.com
• Social Mention

Obviously, you will get more out of the paid services because they provide more metrics for you to evaluate your social media presence and monitoring of what your customers are saying. Charts and graphs are also offered with many of the paid services. With the free services, you will get email alerts or RSS feeds.   They don’t offer as many blogs and web sites to monitor as the paid services and you have to do all the work in terms of pulling the information together.

In addition to addressing negatively, by seeing what people are saying gives you the heads up on your competition. You will be a frontrunner on engaging your customers and adding value to the service you offer.  Now, don’t you think it’s worth doing?

————————-

This post also appeared on the New York Enterprise Report Blog.

As I was walking on the boardwalk in Long Beach, I looked around and saw so many possible pictures to snap and yet, I didn’t have my camera.  If I did, this is what I would have taken…

The first snapshot would be the fierce water making big waves and hitting the white sand beach.  I would take the shot as it curled around and hit the ground.  Snap.

I kept walking and started to jog.

The next shot would be two muscle men training about six or seven women on the boardwalk.  Each woman was doing something different.  While one woman was doing ab work, another woman was climbing up and down from the bench lifting weights above her head.  And yet another woman was jumping rope while someone else was working her biceps.  Snap.

I continued to jog.  I saw a surf camp on the beach with dozens of children eager to learn how to surf.  No one was in the water yet but they all had their wet suits on and were ready to go. Here’s another good photo opportunity. Snap.

I started to sprint.

I saw four or five construction workers fixing the boardwalk.  They were replacing some of the warn wood with new.  They had a section of the boardwalk closed off.  Wearing their uniforms and hammering away, I thought another good photo. Snap.

I ran further.

A carnival was set up on the right side of the boardwalk on an empty block.  There were rides and things and I just wondered when it would begin. Snap.

I started to walk.  (I was getting tired of running.)

I came to the end of the boardwalk on New York Avenue.  There were a few people sitting outside of Vito’s eating pizza.  There was a guy doing dips on the Boardwalk.  And there were little children running by as their parents ran after them.  Snap. Snap. Snap.

With social media becoming so prevalent, a lot of people ask me if I think traditional media is going to die.  And you know what I tell them? Absolutely not!

Yes, there are a lot of newspapers and other media outlets closing their doors but that’s not the majority.  New publications come out every day.

I think that newspapers, magazines, television and radio will be around a very long time.  I really can’t see them disappearing altogether. Millions of people are still reading magazines like Vogue, Family Circle and Good Housekeeping.  Millions of people are still reading the traditional versions of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today.  (I know it because when I’m on the train, I always get hit in the face by a newspaper trying to get folded!) People still watch the networks and also watch cable/satellite.  And lastly, people are still listening to the radio!

The other day, someone told me that he thinks that Satellite radio will go away.  I don’t think that’s the case.  I think there will always be a place for new modes of entertainment whether it be digital radio or social media sites.

In the public relations business, we focus on both traditional and social media.  Many of our clients want a full blown publicity campaign in traditional media only.  (We always provide extra value by putting links up on the social media sites.)  They know that it’s important to get awareness wherever they can.  The more awareness, the more people will know about your business, the more likely people will buy your products or services.

So if you hear that traditional media will be dead, think again.  There will always be a place for all types of media — online and offline!