.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} Last week we talked about how we’re more likely to tell tales on a business than sing its praises. Bad customer service experiences, a hair in your soup – those make for great stories around the water cooler. Nowadays, a great deal of this storytelling is happening on the Internet. Are you monitoring what your consumers, competitors and industry publications are saying about your company? My guess is, the answer is no. After all, there are billions of Web pages and blogs out there – how could you possibly check them all? Actually, the answer is easy. If you use an RSS feed reader, then you just need to create the search criteria and subscribe to it. If that last sentence was Greek to you, here’s how you can monitor the Web and blogs. Go to: www.google.com/alerts (if you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create a free Google account) and create your search criteria, just like you would do in a search engine. I might type “McLellan Marketing Group” if I wanted to see what the world was saying about my agency. Be sure to use smart search techniques so you don’t get bombarded with useless data. You can choose just to get alerts of mentions on blogs, news or Web sites, or choose “comprehensive” to search all of the above. You can customize what you search for, where you search, how often you get notified of search results and the e-mail address you’d like to use to receive the alerts. It’s that easy. In two or three minutes a day, you can keep your finger on the pulse of what’s being said about you in your local market and around the world.

Drew McLellan is Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group and blogs at www.drewsmarketingminute.com. He can be reached at Drew@MclellanMarketing.com. © 2007 Drew McLellan