Brand Monitoring is just a good idea. For those of you in business, brand monitoring is essential to keep you in the know about what is being discussed in the world. This is also very important in the ever growing Social Media world. In the vigilant style of Google Alerts, a useful online tool to monitor Social Media was introduced to me by a friend of mine Courtney Engle.

SocialMention.com is described on their website as ‘Like Google Alerts but for social media’. Why would you need such a tool you ask? This can be a very powerful tool to determine who and where your brand is being discussed. Monitoring where the mentions are coming from can be useful in many ways. Foremost, you can determine whether or not the discussions are positive or negative in nature. This can provide an opportunity from Brand Managers to do what they do best. The opportunity to join the discussion, engage with those that are talking about the brand/company, PR, quality improvement initiatives, and further Word of Mouth efforts are just a few that come to mind.

Take the example of @ComcastSteve and Comcast’s efforts for customer assistance. Comcast’s team utilized popular Microblogging platform Twitter.com to monitor their Comcast’s Brand mentions via Twitter. Anytime someone mentioned Comcast via a Tweet, someone from the Comcast Team were able to see that mention and respond accordingly. That, in and of itself is powerful in terms of communication and community outreach. It takes Customer Service to another level.

So how could you use this tool in your business or brand monitoring?