Look, if you're not in touch enough with your customers to know what forums online they frequent, and don't know how to setup a Google News alert to find new articles on the web written about your company, go hire a college intern that does. Seriously, you don't need to pay somebody thousands of dollars to do this stuff.
I didn't elaborate on any of the previous points regarding using paid services over free tools to persuade you to buy into it. Rather, in an attempt to dispel the notion your putting forward that paid services are monetizing on people's ignorance.
The communication with our clients is constant and dynamic, and must be in line with the rapid pace dictated by the ongoing changes in social media. I also think its important to engage and participate online - I try to make myself accessible in any social media discourse.
If I came across as too pushy or determined to try to sell you something you don't need, I want to point out that this was not my intention. My main reason for chiming in on this particular discussion was to respond on our product mention in this thread, and to clarify on the aspect that our paid service is meant to fulfill the needs of corporations wanting to safeguard and manage their online reputation, and not really meant for individuals.
Joseph Fiore
VP of Technology
CoreX Technologies and Solutions Inc.
What boggles my mind the most after reading the article is that they seem to be selling a service that Google offers for free. You can go to Google News and setup custom alerts that email you whenever your company's name appears in a news or blog article anywhere on the interweb... Sounds like the exact same service this company is selling, although they offer you either email alerts or a "phone call", presumably for those people that are not computer literate enough to regularly read email.
This seems like a totally unnecessary service being marketed to people and companies that don't know any better.
From your post, I disagree with your comment that companies like ours are "selling a service that Google offers for free."
Judging from your comments, it would appear that you don't know the difference between using free tools and paid services to track social media.
I can appreciate your opinions with respect to your suggestion of using free alerting tools, and although they are valid, the online monitoring needs of each company is different from one another. What makes services like RepuTrace(TM) necessary can be described using two words - core competence.
For example, I'll use my own online monitoring needs, and how the mention of our product in this particular forum discussion would not have been picked up by the free alerting tool you recommended. Although in this case, it was an alert to an online mention, what's important to point out is that its a relevant alert (not an advertisement, splog or mismatch on the keyword or keyphrase).
In addition to tracking all online mentions, some of our clients require advanced warning on any/all negative online attention, with a layer of human insight that filters content, interprets risk, sentiment, and handling of the discussion and/or topic so when it arrives in their inbox, they'll know its something they need to attend to immediately. We call this level of advanced warning a "risk alert" and an example would be any online discussion where an activist element might be attempting to stage a protest or rally outside our clients operations.
I can also appreciate the Web savvy Executive, who spends the time to reach out and engage with the online community using free tools. Some of them will be rewarded for their time and devotion to the cause. However, most of them are probably already spreading themselves thin, and in such cases, even the the most savvy Net Executive understands the benefit of saving themselves the precious time to track, analyze, participate and maximize their online engagement by combining all those tools in one central online console.
All our clients are well aware of the free tools available to them. In most cases, when they see an online demo of our RepuTrace(TM) product, they themselves realize the things that put our products and services into a completely different category as it pertains to real-time online monitoring.
In fact, the overwhelming evidence in our experiences points to the fact that any time we save the business community the precious time to compile, store and report on any and all online views across the entire Internet that can make or break a brand, their reputation, or threaten security protection programs, it serves to reinforce our commitment to our clients and they view our services as an investment rather than a cost.
Joseph Fiore
VP of Technology
CoreX Technologies and Solutions Inc.
Thanks for posting the link to that CW article. I wanted to take a moment to clarify a few points as well as provide some information about our company.
CoreX Technologies and Solutions Inc. specializes in tracking online communications with intentions to smear, harm, thieve, attack or target business, guarding against threats to a company's reputation, image, risk, and security protection programs.
Our flagship product RepuTrace(TM) is the All-In-One Corporate Intelligence Tool for small to large businesses that monitors all forms of social media, including blogs (+ comments), chatrooms, social networking sites, consumer sites, gripe sites, videos and images.
RepuTrace(TM) assists online reputation and brand monitoring efforts in the following ways:
o Tracks all forms of online discussion and content, including blogs, forums, consumer sites, social networking sites, video and images.
o Analyzes real-time results by sentiment, geographical location, online media type, and graphing of all relevant trends
o Manages online communications using our proprietary response system
o Maximizes your positive search results and ranking to ensure respectable and objective results are properly positioned (this is more on the SEO side, and sounds similar to what one of the companies mentioned in that article posted by samzenpus is suggesting they also do)
The advantages of a service like RepuTrace(TM) to business can be summed up by talking about such things as the depth of media sourcing, content filtering, human intervention, online client consoles, analytics, real-time trending and charting, sentiment analysis, consulting services, and risk interpretation (ie. alert clients to more serious threats) which put our offerings in an entirely different category, and as the subject of this post reads, really sets us apart from companies that claim to clean up bad online reputations.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to visit our website or blog where you will find our email and toll-free number. For those seeking a corporate tool to track online word of mouth, consumer sentiment, or negative online attention across the entire Internet, we have a short 20 minute online demo of RepuTrace(TM) that you can schedule directly from any of our sites.
Joseph Fiore
VP of Technology
CoreX Technologies and Solutions Inc.
Slashdot Mirror
The communication with our clients is constant and dynamic, and must be in line with the rapid pace dictated by the ongoing changes in social media. I also think its important to engage and participate online - I try to make myself accessible in any social media discourse.
If I came across as too pushy or determined to try to sell you something you don't need, I want to point out that this was not my intention. My main reason for chiming in on this particular discussion was to respond on our product mention in this thread, and to clarify on the aspect that our paid service is meant to fulfill the needs of corporations wanting to safeguard and manage their online reputation, and not really meant for individuals.
Joseph Fiore
VP of Technology
CoreX Technologies and Solutions Inc.
Judging from your comments, it would appear that you don't know the difference between using free tools and paid services to track social media.
I can appreciate your opinions with respect to your suggestion of using free alerting tools, and although they are valid, the online monitoring needs of each company is different from one another. What makes services like RepuTrace(TM) necessary can be described using two words - core competence.
For example, I'll use my own online monitoring needs, and how the mention of our product in this particular forum discussion would not have been picked up by the free alerting tool you recommended. Although in this case, it was an alert to an online mention, what's important to point out is that its a relevant alert (not an advertisement, splog or mismatch on the keyword or keyphrase).
In addition to tracking all online mentions, some of our clients require advanced warning on any/all negative online attention, with a layer of human insight that filters content, interprets risk, sentiment, and handling of the discussion and/or topic so when it arrives in their inbox, they'll know its something they need to attend to immediately. We call this level of advanced warning a "risk alert" and an example would be any online discussion where an activist element might be attempting to stage a protest or rally outside our clients operations.
I can also appreciate the Web savvy Executive, who spends the time to reach out and engage with the online community using free tools. Some of them will be rewarded for their time and devotion to the cause. However, most of them are probably already spreading themselves thin, and in such cases, even the the most savvy Net Executive understands the benefit of saving themselves the precious time to track, analyze, participate and maximize their online engagement by combining all those tools in one central online console.
All our clients are well aware of the free tools available to them. In most cases, when they see an online demo of our RepuTrace(TM) product, they themselves realize the things that put our products and services into a completely different category as it pertains to real-time online monitoring.
In fact, the overwhelming evidence in our experiences points to the fact that any time we save the business community the precious time to compile, store and report on any and all online views across the entire Internet that can make or break a brand, their reputation, or threaten security protection programs, it serves to reinforce our commitment to our clients and they view our services as an investment rather than a cost.
Joseph Fiore
VP of Technology
CoreX Technologies and Solutions Inc.
kbahey,
Thanks for posting the link to that CW article. I wanted to take a moment to clarify a few points as well as provide some information about our company.
CoreX Technologies and Solutions Inc. specializes in tracking online communications with intentions to smear, harm, thieve, attack or target business, guarding against threats to a company's reputation, image, risk, and security protection programs.
Our flagship product RepuTrace(TM) is the All-In-One Corporate Intelligence Tool for small to large businesses that monitors all forms of social media, including blogs (+ comments), chatrooms, social networking sites, consumer sites, gripe sites, videos and images.
RepuTrace(TM) assists online reputation and brand monitoring efforts in the following ways:
o Tracks all forms of online discussion and content, including blogs, forums, consumer sites, social networking sites, video and images.
o Analyzes real-time results by sentiment, geographical location, online media type, and graphing of all relevant trends
o Manages online communications using our proprietary response system
o Maximizes your positive search results and ranking to ensure respectable and objective results are properly positioned (this is more on the SEO side, and sounds similar to what one of the companies mentioned in that article posted by samzenpus is suggesting they also do)
The advantages of a service like RepuTrace(TM) to business can be summed up by talking about such things as the depth of media sourcing, content filtering, human intervention, online client consoles, analytics, real-time trending and charting, sentiment analysis, consulting services, and risk interpretation (ie. alert clients to more serious threats) which put our offerings in an entirely different category, and as the subject of this post reads, really sets us apart from companies that claim to clean up bad online reputations.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to visit our website or blog where you will find our email and toll-free number. For those seeking a corporate tool to track online word of mouth, consumer sentiment, or negative online attention across the entire Internet, we have a short 20 minute online demo of RepuTrace(TM) that you can schedule directly from any of our sites.
Joseph Fiore
VP of Technology
CoreX Technologies and Solutions Inc.