When I get asked to evaluate a company and how they’re interacting online, I run through a basic checklist before going more in-depth. A company that wants to market themselves online in this day and age (this is 2009 not 1999) should tick a few of these boxes:
- How many pages and sites are linking to them? Ideally it should be in the hundreds or thousands. Use Yahoo! Site Explorer. Filter by Inlinks and “except from this domain”.
- They have a blog
- They’re mentioned on blogs – Use Google Blogsearch
- Mentions on blogs comments – Use BackType
- They’re on Twitter
- They get mentions on Twitter – Use Twitter Search
- They have a Facebook Page
- They have a YouTube Account
To be honest a yard-stick I’m now using is Twitter search above all of these. If the highly connected people that are on Twitter are not talking about your company or you amongst the two million messages a day then you need to work harder. As a company you should aim for your company name to be in the language of these connected people.
Cheers for those tips. I found it tough going to get the hang of some of those tools. Now that I’ve established my accounts it just takes an hour or so to monitor daily. At the moment it’s only for personal use but it’s also good practice if I ever start a business.