How do you Montor Your Reputation Online?

[Ed Brooks]

One phrase I really hate is "Online Reputation Management". I believe you build and manage your reputation in the real world; in your stores and with your customer interactions. Now there are a good number of folks scrambling to come up with ways to charge dealers for "Online Reputation Management" tools. The SEO guys want to drive down bad results. Other companies will post lots of good reviews for you. All have the goal of obscuring a bad reputation that may well, let's face it, have been earned. There is a robust conversation going on here What does your PRICING have to do with your REVIEWS? about one way to actually earn a good reputation.


I'm not a Reputation Management Expert. I don't think there are many experts out there, it's a very new field. And as much as I'm a believer in building a great reputation offline, I still really want to monitor, not necessarily manage, what people are saying online. I want to know when they say good things so I can brag on that some. I want to know when they say bad things so I can do my best to fix their issues. That brings me to my question for the DealerRefresh community: Because I'm not an expert, what tools would you recommend? I'm looking for free (or at least cheap) tools and I'm hoping the community can help me crowd-source the best of the bunch.

I've been trying a few over the past couple of weeks. The best I've found so far seems to be MonitorThis. I set it up once, then directed an RSS feed of the results right into Outlook. I get very close to a real-time feed of mentions on the web and twitter. Best part is it's all in my inbox, not a separate app or dashboard. And it's free. Here's the RSS feed for vAuto, so you can get a feel for it.

Trakkur is another that really intrigues me. I'm using the free version and that has a few drawbacks, mainly not real-time, multiple alerts. I'm considering the $18 a month plan as it fixes those issues and adds Facebook mentions to the mix as well. I have Trakkur set up as an RSS feed as well.

Now there is an added dimension for dealers; Reviews. Something I don't have to worry about but every dealer should be monitoring. And there are a ton of review sites out there. How are you tracking them ALL?

So help me and the community out. What have you used and what do you like?

[Alex Snyder]

Reputation Management Tools for Car Dealers | DealerRefresh

Not free and I'm not plugging, but like Brian says this is a good tool. It does everything you're looking for, Ed, and it does it with Car Dealers in mind: Social Relationship Manager by Dealer.com

[Ed Brooks]

Reputation Management Tools for Car Dealers | DealerRefresh

Not free and I'm not plugging, but like Brian says this is a good tool. It does everything you're looking for, Ed, and it does it with Car Dealers in mind: Social Relationship Manager by Dealer.com

Looks great Alex (and who doesn't mind a 'little" plug now and then)!

How does the Social Relationship Manager handle monitoring of reviews. I'm convinced that if reviews haven't hit the critical stage yet they will in the next year or so.

[Alex Snyder]

How does the Social Relationship Manager handle monitoring of reviews. I'm convinced that if reviews haven't hit the critical stage yet they will in the next year or so.

It follows specific review sites and uses a basic rating system in an attempt to "standardize" the different ratings types on various review sites (some use 4 stars, some use 5 stars, etc). This way anyone can quickly glance at the tool to get a good overview of how the dealership is performing overall. Over time more review sites will be added, but all the ones I used to pay attention to, as a dealer, are there plus some I didn't watch.

My favorite part is in the reputation monitoring portion as I used to use a tool Jeff turned me onto years ago that spidered certain websites looking for specific keywords. Unfortunately, it was a program I had to install on Microsoft Windows (I use a Mac) and couldn't be accessed on the web. The Dealer.com SRM tool does basically what that old tool I used to use did, but is web-based. The biggest difference is this SRM tool applies a "sentiment factor" to anything it finds. Through this sentiment factor it gives another quick overview of how highly regarded your dealership is when it is mentioned. This is a great way to watch what people are saying about you on car & local forums, blogs, news sites or anything else you want to plug-in.

With all that said, I can say that this is by far the biggest plug I've ever made on DealerRefresh. I hate plugs and think I may even be breaking the DealerRefresh rules.

[Rob Fontano]

It seems kind of obvious, but Google alerts has served me well over the years. It will catch pretty much everything that pops up online including some of the more subversive sites. The monitoring of it can be kind of arduous, but you can also track your competitors and see what SEO tactics they may be using against you.

[brianpasch]

It seems kind of obvious, but Google alerts has served me well over the years. It will catch pretty much everything that pops up online including some of the more subversive sites. The monitoring of it can be kind of arduous, but you can also track your competitors and see what SEO tactics they may be using against you.

Rob, I use Google Alerts as well but SRM goes past what Google Alerts can report on. Google Alerts is not capturing all the commentary on a dealership. Check out the demo of SRM and I think you will see the need to upgrade from the free services that are just skimming the surface.

[brianpasch]

Reputation Management Tools for Car Dealers | DealerRefresh

Not free and I'm not plugging, but like Brian says this is a good tool. It does everything you're looking for, Ed, and it does it with Car Dealers in mind: Social Relationship Manager by Dealer.com

I've seen many tools for reputation monitoring and I'm very impressed with Dealer.com's SRM...this takes two very important marketing strategies: 1) Monitoring and Responding to consumer feedback and 2) Content Syndication to the next level.

[Jeff Kershner]

Google Alerts is first and easy

Keyword searches on Google Blog Search - then subscribing to the keyword/phrase alerts: email alerts - RSS or feed to Google Reader.

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As Ed suggested monitorThis - Ed, that's funny, I stumbled across this one a few weeks ago.

Ed also suggested Andy Beals' Trackur is also a slick tool. I'm sure Andy has done quite well with it!

As Brian points out - as good as the free services are, they're not able to track a conversation as it threads out. Much like a review site. Think about it - if you're on the page of the company or service you are about to review, would you repeat the name of the company, most likely not. This is when you're not going to get the google alert or a keyword search to rss.

This is where this nifty little program come to good use, UpdatePatrol. You figure out how to get this going and you'll find a few other really cool features you can do with this - like know when all your local competition is making changes to their websites.

You get all of the above plugged in and I think you're good on the capture side.

I'm going to start my own "Online Reputation Management Service!!

[Ed Brooks]

Google Alerts is first and easy

Keyword searches on Google Blog Search - then subscribing to the keyword/phrase alerts: email alerts - RSS or feed to Google Reader.

As Ed suggested monitorThis - Ed, that's funny, I stumbled across this one a few weeks ago.

Ed also suggested Andy Beals' Trackur is also a slick tool. I'm sure Andy has done quite well with it!

As Brian points out - as good as the free services are, they're not able to track a conversation as it threads out. Much like a review site. Think about it - if you're on the page of the company or service you are about to review, would you repeat the name of the company, most likely not. This is when you're not going to get the google alert or a keyword search to rss...

Thanks for the great input Jeff! I like MonitorThis because it seems to include everything in Google Alerts and Google Blog search but also a lot more as well.

Has anyone found a good free option that will provide an RSS feed on Facebook comments?

I checked out Matt Murray's webinar yesterday on the new Dealer.com "Social Relationship Manager". It looked awesome, but of course awesome is rarely free!

[Brian Marchini]

It seems kind of obvious, but Google alerts has served me well over the years. It will catch pretty much everything that pops up online including some of the more subversive sites. The monitoring of it can be kind of arduous, but you can also track your competitors and see what SEO tactics they may be using against you.

Google Alerts has worked well for me too. It will catch about 80% of stuff out there, but it depends on what the person types. I also check the main review sites once per week to ensure nothing has been posted.

You do need to be proactive. It is taking some time, but the staff at our dealership are finally starting to acknowledge that reputation management might be important. For quite some time, the management staff had the opinion that no one read these things and that is was the domain of internet trolls.

After we had a member of managent retaliate against a neg post online, we implemented a policy on how to combat any future negative remarks.

Getting a negative remark is inevitable. It is how you handle it that matters. I find the best way to handle a negative complaint is to throw yourself on your sword, apologize for the experience and offer to rectify the situation. It shows other potential customers that read it that your dealership is willing to help customers resolve their issues rather than just bullying them into a win-lose situation.

A response that challenges a negative review simply makes your own dealership seem petty to future potential clients.