Wondering what people are saying about you or your brand? One of the most powerful tools to keep up what people think is to do a vanity search from time to time. A vanity search is a search (usually on Google) for your name, company name or brand name (really should be doing all of them). Ideally you should own the first page of results – meaning you’ve written or posted everything there. But when a results from someone else shows up, it’s an opportunity for you to take action.
Brands are still figuring out how to react to the social web. Consumers have much more power in the purchasing decision than ever before. Things happen that consumers aren’t happy about – and they’re going to share that with their network. Unfortunately the negative usually gets posted about much more than the positive – which is just the nature of business.
You may think that ignoring a few negative comments may be ok, but many large brands have found out the hard way that’s not the case (motrin, dell, southwest, etc). Usually people comment about a bad experience because they want it to be resolved. In which case, responding is actually the best thing you can do. Even if you can’t do anything for the person, just listening may be enough.
This isn’t to say that you want to give free things to everyone who tweets something negative about you – that’s a slippery slope. But listening, responding and improving your service are always good for business.
Regularly doing vanity searches as part of your social media routine will help you find what people are saying so you can adequately respond and correct as needed.
How do you use vanity searches? or do you?