If you have a brand, company, product, or just keywords that you carefully build a business model around, you are no doubt very interested in how that is being perceived by the public. Large companies and their public relations firms spend a lot of money to find out that kind of feedback. Internet entrepreneurs read blogs related to their business and occasionally do Web searches to see how they’re doing.
On today’s World Wide Web, though, the social network is king. Whether you’re marketing or just participating, Web 2.0 is the new way that we all communicate online. Currently, much of our communications online are taking place through Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc.
StartPR.com gives the entrepreneur the chance to check out how their brand, keywords, product, etc. are doing with just a single search instead of several on just one site instead of many. It searches all of the popular Web 2.0 hotspots for you, at one location. It also sends alerts, daily digests, and so forth to keep you informed about how your keywords and brand are doing.
Just coming out of private beta, StartPR is all about getting the current information on what the buzz about your brand is and where it’s happening.
Basic searches are free, you don’t even have to sign up or log into an account. You can just use the search bar at the StartPR site to see what’s happening right now. Basic searches like this produce article titles, links, or the entire tweet, depending on what’s found. Searching for Rev2, for instance, came up with blog entries at other sites, a few tweets with links to our blogs, and even a couple of YouTube videos with us mentioned in the video description or comments.
In fact, most of what was found surprised me. To fully utilize the StartPR system, though, requires an account. Free accounts are limited to 2 projects (searches), 2 users, and only 256mb of storage space. With that, you can find some basic information and keep up to date on a small setup (say a single blog or website). Prices for professional accounts start at $19/month.
Through the site, you can share found content with others in your group, allowing larger endeavors to find and share information for PR collaboration. It also gives the smart media marketer to engage with those who are talking about the brand or business and build better relations and buzz.
At the very least, the blogger or small-startup entrepreneur will want to do a basic search at StartPR to see how they’re doing. It’s free and easy and definitely worth a try.
