4 Ways to Monitor the Competition Online

Admit it--you've Googled yourself. At some point, most of us have. As a business person, this is actually a great idea. It allows you to monitor your online reputation, gauge the success of your SEO efforts, and even do a little damage control, if necessary.

But here's a question--have you Googled your competition? If you haven't, they may rank higher in search engines than you and you won't even know it. (And if that's the case, you can bet consumers are calling them instead of you because they're easier to find.)

Search engine rankings are only one way to monitor other agents in your market. All day long, people are tweeting, posting, and sharing things with each other on social media and other places on the web. By "listening" in on your competition, you can get a better idea of who they're doing business with, how they're marketing themselves, and what others are saying about them.

If you want to keep your sleuthing on the down low, there are plenty of easy ways to do that. Here are four:

1. Use Facebook Interest Lists

Facebook is an important marketing channel, so you'll want to keep an eye on what others are doing in this space. If you don't want others to know whose real estate business pages you're watching, there's an alternative to "liking" a page. Simply create an Interest List and add any pages you want to keep an eye on to that list. Since you're not actually liking the page, it won't show up on your profile.

Create an Interest List of any competitors whose pages you want to monitor. Facebook will automatically update you on activity on your list. To view all recent posts from list members, simply click the list's name. You can find it on the left sidebar on Facebook's main page under the subhead "Interests."

This is the first of two "undercover" Facebook strategies (see #4 for the other).