The Positives and the Perils of Monitoring Your Brand on the Internet

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The Importance of Monitoring Your Brand

As we continue along on our journey to building a successful blog, we've learned a lot along the way. In past episodes we talked about things like developing our content strategy, tracking the source of our traffic, connecting with influencers, building an email list, promoting our content through social media and we even discussed how to use images and post titles to be more memorable and make a deeper connection with our readers. 

Now you're at the point in your blog's growth were you need to be mindful and pay attention to what others are saying about you. You need to know who and when people are linking to your content. Find out who your fans and supporters are. On the other hand, it's important to know when and if something negative is being said about you so that you can react and respond quickly.  

What Tracking Tools Can I Use

Whenever people talk about brand monitoring they will always recommend using Google Alerts. It's easy to sign up for Google Alerts, just enter your email address, and your name or keywords that you want to monitor and you'll start getting email notifications when Google detects the link or the mention. The problem with this is that Google Alerts aren't as accurate as they used to be. There is a ton of stuff getting past the radar and you'll find out when you sign up for this next service I'm going to recommend. 

TalkWalker Alerts

I'm getting a whole lot more notifications from TalkWalker Alerts these days than I get from Google Alerts. Here are a few examples:

+Ana Hoffman from Traffic Generation Cafe linked to my blog in a post about on page SEO.

+Daniel Tan issued a News Release about SEOPressor and mentioned my popular tutorial on the topic

Fellow named blogger Karmarka mentioned me in a comment on +Lisa Irby's blog!

Then there is also a down side to monitoring your brand. By that I'm referring to the time when you find something that doesn't exactly make you smile - like people scraping your content! This one is coming directly from my RSS feed. I can tell because it starts off with "New on Basic Blog Tips:" which is the phrase I added to FeedBurner...

Be sure to sign up for TalkWalker Alerts in addition to Google Alerts.

Google Analytics Trackbacks

Go to your Google Analytics reports (read this if you need help setting up Google Analytics) and under Traffic > Social > Trackbacks, take a look at these reports. Here's a screenshot from mine where I found two pleasant surprises from +Sharon Hurley Hall and +Timo Kiander 

Click to enlarge image

What other tools are you using to keep track of people mentioning your brand and your keywords? Let me know in the comments. 

Please stop by iTunes and give the podcast a review and rating or subscribe on Stitcher and I'll speak to you soon! 

Mentioned in this episode:

• Shout out to +Justin Germino from DragonBlogger
• CommentLuv
• Crazy Egg Blog
• Pick the Brain Blog
• Basic Blog Tips on Scoop.it or YouTube Tips and Tutorials
• Podcaster's Daily on Paper.li

Claim Your Blog on Technorati in 2013

Technorati was the #5 traffic Source for Basic Blog Tips in 2012

In this episode I encourage bloggers to register their blog's in the Technorati blog directory. Currently over 1.3 million blogs are listed and the submission process is simple to do.

A review of the 2012 traffic stats for Basic Blog Tips, my primary blog, shows that because of the directory listing, Technorati became the #5 source of referral traffic for the entire year. 

The benefit of getting visitors from Technorati is that the traffic is highly targeted and engaged. Many of the visitors ended up subscribing to my email list, following me on Twitter or Facebook and subscribing to my YouTube Channel. 

Technorati is "set-it-and-forget-it"

Sign up for an account with Technorati and the process of claiming your blog is pretty straight forward. Enter the title, description and RSS feed for the blog and Technorati will provide you with a claim code. 

The claim code needs to appear inside of a blog post, and this is Technorati's way of verifying that you are the owner or administrator of the site. I recommend adding the code to an existing blog post (versus publishing a post just for the purpose of the claim). You'll receive an email once your site is verified and basically that's it! That is all you need to do in order to complete the procedure - "set-it-and-forget-it".

I first noticed the increase in traffic and back links when I was monitoring my blog's progress in Google Webmaster Tools. And at the end of 2012 I received an Annual Traffic Report from WordPress.com. I recorded a video to demonstrate the wealth of information provided in:

WordPress Stats from the JetPack Plugin

Don't think that Technorati is just for small blogs, even the high traffic blogs are taking advantage of being listed in this powerful blog directory. The Huffington Post, Mashable, The Verge, and many other leading blogs have claimed their listing and so should you!

Here's a screenshot of the top five blogs!

Did you claim your blog with Technorati yet? Let me know in the comments below!

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Why You Should Start a Second Blog on Blogger

MS. ILEANE SPEAKS PODCAST HAS MOVED!

FIND NEW EPISODES HERE: http://ileanesmith.com/podcast

WordPress is the #1 blogging platform of choice for many bloggers including myself. But in this episode I'll share with you, why I chose Blogger as the platform for the Ms. Ileane Speaks Podcast blog.

Question - Is it time for you to start a SECOND blog?

When it was time for me to find a home for this podcast I had to decide where I would host the blog. Since I already have a thriving and successful, self-hosted WordPress blog, I didn't want to add the podcast to that site because of branding issues. After all this podcast is Ms. Ileane Speaks and my WordPress blog is Basic Blog Tips and the two brands don't mesh together seamlessly. 

After careful consideration I decided to use Google's Blogger platform and in this episode I talk about my reasons for coming to this conclusion. Here's what I discuss:

Why I'm Using Google's Blogger Platform for this Podcast's Blog

1. Visibility on Google (Google+ was shut down)

2. Libsyn's "On Publish" podcasting feature works with Blogger which I first heard about from +Ray Ortega in an interview on The Podcasters Studio with +Rob Walch 

3. Blogger's built in mobile template

4. Drag and Drop layout customization

5. Google Analytics integration

6. Social Sharing options without plugins

7. Uploading images from Smart Phones

8. Consistent "Up time" and no plugin conflicts with platform updates

9. It's FREE!

All in all, I think that anyone who is addicted to blogging like I am should consider starting a second (or ancillary) blog with Google's Blogger platform.

Will you consider starting a second blog in 2020?

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