Most people assume we’re only advising to monitor negative comments — but what if customers are saying great things about you online?  Shouldn’t you be gathering that information to use in convincing potential new customers?  It’s well-known that potential customers are influenced by what your previous customers say.  Good feedback can help you win new business.

Gather up all those links to compliments and other nice feedback in your Delicious bookmarks and share them on your site or in your email newsletters.  And if you weren’t sure of the business applications for having a Delicious bookmarking account, now you know.

On the other hand, if a customer makes a negative comment, seriously consider taking action to make it right with them.  Customer service isn’t just about always doing the right thing;  It’s also about how you handle things, when they haven’t gone well.

Potential customers may just be impressed by your open attempts to solve a problem.  The fact that you’re pro-actively monitoring complaints online, and responding to them will offer a huge boost to your reputation with many potential customers.

Another advantage to monitoring, that I rarely see mentioned,  is that you can use that information to create original content. Write articles and blog posts about a topic that’s hot right now.  I’m amazed at how often people don’t have a clue about what to write in their business blogs.  If you’re on top of what’s happening, there’s always plenty to write about.

Most people, even businesspersons, ask for advice before buying a product or a service.  Many even do this online.  By monitoring keywords that have to do with your business you will be notified immediately when someone uses those keywords to get advice about buying. You can immediately offer help, advice, a free consultation – whatever it takes to turn that person into a lead and a customer.

Monitor your business, your competition and your industry.  You will protect or enhance your reputation,  stay strategic about what the competition is doing, and gather tons of material that will help you create meaningful content at the same time that you’ll be engaging new leads in their own forums.

If you need a few referrals, here are some social media monitoring tools that will help you stay on top of the buzz:

Google Alerts is free, but you’ll end up getting email alerts for unrelated things. For example, I set up an alert for “Maggie Curran” and I get notices every time something is written online about any “Maggie” or any “Curran,” as well. You can sign up for alerts for anything: competitor names, any products, any combination of terms. You name it.

Paid services let you monitor not only your company name online, but your competitors, your products, your competitors products, brands, blogs, industry terminology – virtually anything that would be strategic information for your business.  They also have filters you can set up to make the results more meaningful.

Trackur is a paid service that costs between $18 and $377 per month.  It may sound like a lot, but if you offer this service to clients, it might be much more cost and time effective.

Alterian’s SM2 offer a Fremium (free) version that gives you up to 1000 results, which works for most small businesses.  I’ve been getting really good reports from them.

Radian6 is an industry leader with big clients and their prices reflect this. They won’t even quote you a price online. (Ed. Note: They offer pricing in the FAQ.)  They push a sign up for a free demo.

If you’ve got others you prefer using, leave a comment and tell us why.

2.  Your website needs to be alive to serve any positive purpose in your business.  That means it should be updated regularly – at least 2-3 times per week.  Have a communication plan (what updates are you going to make?),  whenever something happens post it (you can schedule posts for publishing on later dates), and give various people in your organization (if not all) the power to contribute content.  You or someone you select can authorize publication or not, as you see fit.

3.  Skip special effects, flash animations, music, intros – anything that prevents your website visitor from seeing what they came to see, quickly and easily and without distraction.  Check out www.ibm.com or www.apple.com or any major website.  See any flash? No.   They spend a lot of money figuring out what works, so you don’t have to.  Imitate the best.  Sure, your website can be visually appealing, but don’t go overboard.  Make sure you know what your customers want before you redesign.

4.  Make the site easy to update and easy for web visitors to communicate with you.  No one likes to deal with mysterious strangers, except maybe on a dating site.  Experiment to see what works best for you.

5.  Design for Internet Explorer.  I only use Firefox as my internet browser, but 60% of people use Internet Explorer.  Make sure your site looks good and functions perfectly in IE.

6.  Don’t make your web visitors sign in or create an account in order to get any information. Everyone HATES this.  You will lose customers and the website visitors that could talk about you, write about you, or otherwise bring you other visitors/potential customers.  Don’t even give a hint that you expect your website visitors to sign in at any time in the future.  Just don’t do it.

7.  You don’t need to fit everything in to the window.  A web page can be very long.  In fact, there’s a whole school of website marketing that is all about having 1 really long home page and nothing else except for an order page.  Just make sure there’s nothing on the page that is unnecessary.  Remember, nobody’s afraid to scroll.

8.  Remember what the purpose of your website is and design with that purpose in mind.  If you want to sell, then make sure you’re selling.  If you want to get people to give you their email addresses, then make sure you’re offering something good in exchange or they won’t give it. Have a purpose and stick to it.

9.  Always add metrics.  You need to know if your website is working for you.  Get Google Analytics, StatCounter, SiteMeter or any other free statistics program to start.  You’ll be able to prove that the more often you update your site, the more visitors you’ll get, and the higher your search ranking will be when people search Google or Yahoo or any other search engine.

10.  Don’t be so serious.  Depending on your business, you can and should experiment with the look and feel of a website.  Do your homework, see what your competition is doing, borrow the good stuff and throw away the stuff that doesn’t work.  Be flexible enough to try new things.  You may just be pleasantly surprised at what works.