The massive use of social networks together with the appearance of smartphones and tablets, makes the available information exceed the limits of what we understood as “news” until a few years ago. We no longer only have access to what is broadcast by the professional media, but we know, almost in real time, what readers and viewers are saying about these same news and events.
To this ability to interact with the media, we must add that portable media, social networks, as well as comments in newspapers and blogs have made us all possible “journalists”. This situation requires that everyone who, due to their work or social activity, has an exposure to public opinion, must know and, as far as possible, control what is published about it on the Internet.
Online reputation indicates the prestige that a person, brand, business or Institution may have achieved on the Internet through the opinions published on forums, blogs or social networks. It is not in any way controllable by us, but knowing and following it can help to take possible measures, which we will talk about on another occasion, to mitigate the negative effects that biased, partial or false information can cause in the prestige of our companies or our personal reputation.
A relatively easy way to start monitoring our online reputation is to use the Alerts service that Google makes available to us on the Web at http://www.google.es/alerts . Google alerts are email messages that you receive when Google finds new results (for example, web pages, news, etc.) that match the words you have chosen to query.
We must choose which words we want Google to track to inform us when new content appears. It also allows us to choose, with the “Type of result” option, if we want to receive alerts of all types of content, or only that which appears in forums, blogs, video or news.
The notices will be sent to the email we indicate on the form. We can choose whether we want them at the same time they occur, once a day or once a week. These notices will only reach us if new content is produced, that is, Google will not send us anything if new content does not appear in the index for the indicated words. Finally, it also allows us to indicate whether we want all the results or only those that Google considers relevant.
Google alerts are an essential way to start being interested in our prestige, or that of our companies and brands, on the Internet. This is the way to start seriously monitoring our online reputation .
