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Keeping Up On Your Brand Reputation with Firefox Extensions

Tracking your brand reputation on search engines, Twitter, Facebook, and other sites is an integral part of good reputation management. To be truly effective, however, you’ll want to check in regularly to see what’s changed, and how you can best get everything back on track. This can be greatly expedited through a liberal use of appropriate Firefox Extensions, which can speed up mundane tasks, and give you data that otherwise would take a great deal more time to work out on your own. These extensions are some of the most useful and affordable tools to help you build your online presence and manage your reputation effectively. 

Of course, one of the best Firefox Extensions for managing your reputation is the simple search widget included with Firefox – you can use it to search not only Google, but almost any site you might find yourself referenced on, without having to directly visit the site and find the search, saving you a step or two each time you search.

UpdateScanner

This is a convenient, free, and easy-to-use Firefox Extension that helps you track when updates are made to a webpage. While some sites have RSS feeds that can do this task for you, many do not. If one of these sites mentions you regularly, or if you anticipate data about you being changed there, you can use UpdateScanner to be immediately informed when the information changes.

coComment

Perhaps one of the most useful reputation management tools available, coComment is a way to track all of your various online discussions in one convenient place. The Firefox Extension keeps track of every site you post a comment on. When people respond to your comments, you are immediately informed. You can choose to be informed via the extension, by RSS feed, by a Google Gadget, or by email alerts. This makes it much easier to remain on top of hundreds of diverse conversations, ensuring you respond in a timely manner to anything that needs your attention, improving your online reputation and helping to interconnect you with large communities. The extension works with virtually any site, including all of the major blog platforms, YouTube, Flickr, the NYTimes, and many others.

EchoFon

There are a myriad of Twitter Firefox Extensions, but EchoFon is one of the most robust and least intrusive. It sits as a small icon on your bottom bar, and when you receive a new message or are referenced in a Tweet a small box appears and tells you what was said. You can also use EchoFon to post new updates, to save yourself from moving out of your browser. EchoFon pops up a chat-like display when you click its icon, giving you full Twitter functionality.

Facebook Toolbar

The Facebook Toolbar extension is exactly what it sounds like: an extension that adds Facebook functionality to any open Firefox tab. You can post updates, as well as see Friend activity. This will let you seamlessly stay integrated in conversations with your follower base, without having to constantly be checking Facebook to check for new updates.

Strengthen Your Link Reputation and Brand

Inbound links, or links that direct people to your site from other sites, are one of the cornerstones of a strong online brand. Not only do they drive traffic directly, they also influence how much weight your site carries with search engines, helping to bolster your online reputation. Many people take a passive approach to inbound links – if they appear, great, if they don’t, they don’t worry. Others work hard at getting new links, but are only aware of the links they directly solicit.

Build Your Link Reputation

Most people don’t realize that by failing to monitor inbound links, you’re actually missing a great opportunity to reach out to supporters, increase traffic to your site and build your Google CV. The internet is built on a model of reciprocity, and many people regularly check their outbound links to see if the link is reciprocated. If it isn’t, they may cull those links to make more room for people who will link back to them. Knowing when a site links to you allows you to decide whether it is a link you want to pursue keeping, and gives you the chance to take the steps necessary to keep it. Knowing when new links come in also gives you the opportunity to reach out to those people and, if necessary, ask them to improve the link text to best help your search engine relevance.

Collect Data About Your Links

There are two main classes of inbound link monitors: standalone software and web services. Both has their merits and flaws, but as both have costs associated with them, most people choose to opt for free web services. Using a web service gives you portability, and ensure you will never have downtime – rather than having to remember to open a program to check your links, it is done for you every day and you receive an email giving you an overview of new links gained and lost.

Develop a Linking Strategy

You can then use this data to develop a weekly strategy. Look at the new links you’ve gained, and visit the sites they came from. Decide whether you think that site has search engine relevance or traffic relevance for you, and if so how valuable it is. Find the context in which your link appears, and see if you think there is anything that could be improved – maybe it should go to a different page on your site, or have different link text. Then find contact information for the site operator and write them an email thanking them for the link to your site, informing them you have put up a reciprocal link (if you felt it was worth it), and if necessary asking them politely if they would mind updating your link information slightly.

You will also be informed when links to your site have disappeared. In these cases, if the inbound link was from a source you cared about, you’ll want to send an email and ask why they removed the link to your site, and whether there is anything you could do to reconcile the situation. If they decide to leave your link removed, you may wish to remove any outbound links you have to their site, as these one-way links may negatively impact your search engine rankings.

Use LookupPage Services

At some point, you may want to hire a team of professionals to manage your link reputation. LookupPage has a team of advanced SEO and linking professionals who know exactly which content to promote and how, greatly improving your link reputation. LookupPage also helps individauls and businesses get first page rankings on major search engines, under unique domain names.To start benefiting from our expertise, upgrade to our plan for professionals and follow these simple steps:

1. Sign into your account (or create a new one).
2. Click the "My Account" tab.
3. Click the "Upgrade / Renew your subscription" link.
4. Chose the "Pro" package and purchase.

We look forward to helping you manage your online image and reputation to ensure a safer and fully enriched online future.

How to Use Google to Monitor Your Brand Reputation

    

One of the reasons Google has become so powerful in the past decade is the fact that they have come up with excellent tools for the online community to use at no immediate cost to the end user. Because so many of us have a Gmail account, it is very convenient to click a single button and remain within Google property for photo sharing on Picasa or reading Tom Friedman’s latest article on Google Reader. Google is simply making money from offering relevant ads and services while making our lives easier. Their strong targeting is a result of knowing what we have been searching online and emailing about to our friends.

 Monitoring the performance of a website has become easier with Google Analytics, a free tool as well. Any person who has website nowadays can monitor the traffic the site is receiving and determine several important factors such as which key words generated the page view, the physical origin of the search and the type of internet browser used to visit the site. It was worthwhile for Google to give out Analytics free of charge because they realized that its full integration with Google Adwords would sell many sponsored listings.

Which free tool is Google offering to monitor my online brand reputation?

Although it is imperative for a business or a professional to establish a positive Google resume, there are tools that can be used to monitor new results on a day-to-day basis.   Google Alerts is a great tool for knowing what is being said online. It is very easy to set up an alert and the user can determine how often he or she will be receiving notices from Google, it can also be stopped at any time. A business can set up an alert for its name and the name of its competitors so that when new information appears they would be notified.  

How does Google Alerts Work? 

Google bots are constantly “crawling” the web. If an alert has been set up and they notice a change or new content regarding the topic of the alert, they send out an email with a link to the new content.

 

Find Out Who Is Googling You

People are taking their Google CV more seriously these days and with good reasoning. Googling someone is no longer just the practice of checking out the history of a potential date but a genuine inquiry that companies make when considering a job applicant or deciding whether to hire company X versus company Y.

It is safe to assume that choosing between two companies whose service and prices are similar could end up in a tie breaking decision that will be made online. Businesses and professionals realize that often only their web presence and online reputation are doing the selling for them.

It is equally significant to know who searches for you online. If a business or a brand is aware of whom its potential clients are it makes it that much easier to target and optimize the message for that audience. There are a number of free and premium tracking tools online that inform you of how many visitors your page had, where the query came from and at times even what the query was that resulted in a visit to your page. Two popular tools are http://www.freestats.com/ and http://www.addfreestats.com .