How can I monitor online conversations?

People are talking, whether you like it or not. How can you know what they say?

I found this article really useful.

Here’s what you can do:

• Set up Google Alert by keywords to get emails anytime someone talks about you
• Use SocialMention to track and measure conversations about you and your competitors on major sites and social networks. You can also add a widget on your website.
• Use a tool such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to track and manage conversations on Twitter and other social networks.
• Monitor the blogosphere through Technorati.

If you need a more detailed analysis you can always look for a structured servoce, such as BuzzReader.

Google, myself and I

When you use Google and its many services, how do you identify yourself? According to Google blog, there are a few options: you can be unidentified, use a pseudonymous or be identified.

But there’s far more than that. As someone said, your online identity is determined not only by what you post, but also by what others post about you – whatever it is. When someone googles you, the SERPs are a mix of all this.

As far as June 2011 Google released an improved Dashboard page in order to manage as precisely as possible your web reputation.

Here you can manage the Alert service about you, edit your profile – here’s mine – and link all your profiles around the web.

So far so good, it’s all about you. But there are also some ways to influence SERPs: you can try and remove a page from the SERPs and manage your reputation in an effective way.

Moreover, from the Dashboard you can access and manage pretty much every existing Google service: Analytics, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Groups, Maps, Picasa, Reader, Youtube, Chrome sync, Adwords, navigation history and so on.