You know everyday on the internet, there are literally billions of conversation that take place, from site visitors posting comments in web pages to online articles to blog entries. There’s no sure that your content covering just about every topic in the world. But how can an organization find out if any of these conversations are about them and their brands? Well, some people may consider keeping close tabs on what is being said about an organization and its services and brands as being on the edge of vanity. Normal people are saying about the organizations, services, and brands, is invaluable feedback. Not only to determine what positive things are resonating among volunteers, staff members and the general public but also these potential problems early and to head them off before they become a public relations nightmare.
In the past, many companies have relied on clipping services to help them keep track of when their name, brands, or events get mentioned in the media. Well, many of this thinks services still exist today. The increasing amount of content being produced daily requires a whole new range of tools in order to track what’s being said and who’s saying it. The good news for those organizations tracking digital buzz is that there are several very powerful tools available and they are absolutely free. Let’s take a look at a few.
Now, our first stop is one of the most prevalent properties on the web and that is Google. Most of us know how to use Google to look for website information but there are also plenty of opportunities within the Google structure. They can help us to look for buzz and trends by not only checking the web listings but by also drilling down a little deeper to check out what’s happening in the blog sphere in the news media and other places on the web. For example, if I wanted to get a better understanding of what types of conversations were taking place in the web regarding an organization for which I’m a volunteer, I would go on here and I put in the information for reading for the blind and dyslexic so rfbd.org and by clicking Google search it will take me to directly into a search engine results page which is now surprising and it will show me the organizations homepage, the links along with other links that relate to this organization. But I can drill down a little bit deeper and get more specific information if I want to.
For example, if I go into Google, I could look here and there’s a more link. And by clicking the more link, it pulls down a little menu then I can get more information about how this particular domain is being represented by different organization to different places. I go on here and it’s like blogs and by selecting blogs, what it would allow me to do is go in and get a very specialized listing of just blogs that are in here. You can see, everybody who has referred to this domain name in the blog is listed here. So, for the last few months, here are all the things. So, I can read about what people are saying about my organization if I want to.
I’m going to just go in here, I’m going to clip off this thing where it says link very quickly and just go back in with just a straight domain name. And I want to go in and see if anybody is talking about us on YouTube. Let’s write Google, who owns YouTube, also includes information if I click on this YouTube link, it will take me into a YouTube results page and now I can see how this organization’s domain name is used and associated with several videos that have been posted as well.
Now, Google and other search engines are excellent tools for being able to track down specific items regarding an organization’s efforts. But few organizations have to bend with the constant list on top of the buzz. Fortunately, companies like Google provide free clipping services that allow organizations to easily request email reminders in the event that their name appears anywhere on the web. You can set Google alerts very simply by once again going to the more menu and at the very bottom there’s a tag that says “even more.” And what it’ll provide you is pretty much a list of all of the different products and services that Google provides in different links. And what you want to do, right here at the very top there’s something called alerts. And by clicking alert it takes you to the Google alerts box and then last it should come in here and you can put it in the search terms that you want Google to use to find information about your organization or pretty much anything that you are interested to follow up.
So, you could put your domain name here, you could put keywords that are associated with your organization. It defaults a comprehensive as a type or comprehensive includes as pretty much anything that has appeared as part of a newscast, a blog, or on the web. So, it’s really just a combination of all those things and where we can also specialize and go and see. I want to just see things that were coming up regarding video. You can also determine how often you want to get this updates. You can get them as they happen, you can get them once a day or you can get them combined and get them weekly. And of course you provide them with your email address and create the click alert and the next thing you know you’ll start getting updated emails with your name or links that associated with the names that you’re looking for anytime they happen. So, Google is a great tool to be able to follow along and see what’s happening online but there are plenty of other tools as well. Let’s take a look.
During the past five years, blogs have become an information powerhouse on the web. According to Technorati, an organization that tracks the blog sphere, there are close to 25 million active bloggers in the United States. We’ve closed to 100 million people in the US who read blogs on a regular basis. Well, newspaper is another traditional media, used to be the dominant form of getting the word out. Today’s blogs cover a wide range of topics and quite possibly are even talking about your organization. How can you find out? Well, one great way is by using the service called BlogPulse to find out what’s being said about your organization. BlogPulse is a free service of the Nielsen Company and offer several great tools to help any organization gain a better understanding of what’s being said about them, in what context and who’s doing this thing.
Like with Google search, BlogPulse can be searched using either keywords or the organizations domain name, using our example organization. And now, if we go, we can do a search and it’ll show us anywhere in the blogsphere that that has been used. The result shows a list of all the different blog entries that have been made that include a reference to the domain name or keywords that were used. Now, BlogPulse can also do trend searches to help an organization better understand what is triggering buzz. For example, if I click on the trend search button here, it takes me to a screen that allows me to see a chart profiling when and how certain keywords have been used.
So for example, I can go in here and I can say let’s look once again to see how often that the organization’s domain name comes up. Aand I’ll just name this tag domain so that later I know what it is and if I click the get trend button, it returns a chart that shows me different points on the calendar in which information or data spikes information was recorded regarding that domain name. Now, this is nice and all of that looks good and it’s good to know that you’re getting a little bit exposure. However, one of the things about BlogPulse that makes it very powerful is that I can go and click on the pinnacle of anyone of these events and get a deeper understanding of what caused that event to happen. So, let’s go here to the steepest point of our chart and if I click on that, it will show me in the search results that that was the day that reading for the blind and dyslexic introduced a new service offering.
Now, BlogPulse can also be use to run a comparison between different organizations or different sets of keywords. For example, I may want to compare the frequency of use of the organizations domain name in blogs against the name of the organization itself. In this case, I would put the domain name in the first area here and let me put in reading for the blind and dyslexic here. This will be—I’ll just call this name and now I can go in here and I can get a trend and I could compare the two data sets against one another. And now when the chart is built, I have two areas of data, one that shows every time the domain name was used and others that show when the entire phrase reading for the blind and dyslexic was used. And once again I can go in here, I can click on various points at the pinnacle of each one of these dots and find out in what context that information was used and what we first do directly.
Not only this does give the organization more content to look through but it also offers better insight into how bloggers and other news organization are referring to the organization when they are discussing it.
In the organization that website could be the central pillar on how people learn about its mission in these events. But how can an organization better determine how effective the website is, not only drawing attention in driving traffic but in spreading the word. One way to determine the health of any organization’s website is to identify the number of other web pages that are linked to that website. To accomplish this task, there are number of services that allow organizations to check what are known as back links to their website.
The back link is simply when the organization’s website is linked to another website using a link that’s design to drive traffic. These back links checkers can provide organizations with a great deal of insight into not only how they’re being referenced by their companies but it can also show them where there traffic is coming from and who their online supporters and allies are. Now, one example and the tool that I recommend can be find at www.iwebtool.com/backlilnk_checker.
Now, this is a free tool and easily allows users to enter their organizations domain name and see what other websites are linked to the site. And we put in the domain name and we click on check and we give it a moment to do its magic. That reading for the blind and disabled has almost 13,850 back links associated with that. That means there are other signs or at least 13,850 sites or web pages that have a link that relates back to this website.
Now, which one of these items in the list is also a clickable link that can allow the organization to look at individual web pages that they are linked to. So, we can scroll down here and let’s find one that we can use. Anyone here? For johnwiley.com, this is a textbook publishing company. And it takes us to the Wiley permission’s website and a quick scroll down will show us that the link right here if you required audio version of the text readings for the blind and dyslexic. So the link is there and it back tracks. So by this way you can go and figure out how you’re being represented, how people are connecting to you. By the way every different site that connects to your organization also helps your organization participation in the overall search process. Pretty much the greater number of people who have linked into your site, the better your site will do in the search engine. So, it’s a good thing to keep in mind as well.
So, as you can see, keeping track of an organizations online buzz is not only easy but it’s often free. It can really provide a great deal of insight into how that organization is being represented as well as provide good feedback on the impact that the organization is made.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this brief program and advise you to make suggestions for future how to videos that you feel would benefit organizations like yours. Thank you for your time. Hope to see you real soon.
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