Do you know what bloggers are saying about you?

Last week I talked about attack blogs and some ways to survive them. One thing I thought of after writing the post is that there are some proactive measures that can be taken prior to a crisis situation to monitor the blogosphere for both good and bad things that might be said about your organization. Here are a couple of things you should do (and they won't cost you anything):

• Search for your organization's name in Technorati and Google's Blog search. You want to do blog specific searches rather than just a simple Google search. This will cut out all the miscellaneous references from non-blogs.

• Search for key leaders names in Technorati and Google's Blog search. Same reasons as above.
  

• Set up an RSS feed in Technorati for a search for all of the above. If you don't know what RSS is check out this post. If so, Technorati has a cool feature that lets you retain any search as an RSS feed. If you do this you won't have to keep doing the two bullet points above. You can bring the search results to you as often as you like.
  

Even if you're not concerned about any type of crisis situation pertaining to blog discussions about your organization, I suggest you monitor this anyway. It will be a great way to learn for yourself what some people are saying about you (if anything) whether good or bad. It will also provide an opportunity to reach out to some like minded individuals.

If you're doing this type of search for a business organization, you might find you've got some big fans of a product or service you provide. You should really try to tap into those people and build a relationship with them. They're obviously natural evangelists. If you represent a church, you may discover some people in your congregation with unique gifts or compelling insight that would be an asset to your ministry. The point is you never really know what you're going to find so keep an eye on it on a regular basis. All it will take is one good find to make it worth while.