Checking in With KnowEm.com

If the name KnowEm sounds familiar it’s because we’ve written about the service before. We first introduced KnowEm as a a cool startup to watch and then kept you up-to-date when we got our first glimpse of KnowEm 2.0. You may simply also recognize KnowEm as one of the biggest social media darlings to rise over the past year. Either way, KnowEm is back with even more goodness to share as they unleash the Enterprise version out of beta. And as a small business owner, you’re going to want to pay attention.

If you’re not yet familiar with KnowEm, you should really take a look at what they have to offer because I’d argue it’s one of the most useful social media services around. KnowEm has established itself as the leader in online brand protection and offers brand services at price points affordable to both small business owners and major corporations like Continental Airlines (a KnowEm client). Through KnowEm, small business owners can check the availability of their name or brand name on more than 400 different social networks for free, as well as check domain availability. And because you never know which site will become the next Twitter, you can also have KnowEm go out and secure your brand for you on any number of those networks. In an age where you are your handle, it’s a service any small business can benefit from.

But none of that is what’s new.

This week KnowEm co-founders Barry Wise and Michael Streko opened up the Enterprise version of KnowEm to the public. I had the chance to speak to Barry and he cautioned that small business owners not let the “enterprise” name scare them away. There’s a lot here that SMB owners can benefit from.

Wise added:

Any small business which wants to promote a few brands, products or marks will find our enterprise dashboard useful because we provide one central dashboard to create, review, and track all their different usernames in social media. When you create an order for a new username, our staff go about not only creating accounts on all the popular social networks, but also identifying those networks where the name has already been squatted on or taken. This is the same as our consumer service, except they are included on one dashboard.

Through the Enterprise version of KnowEm, small business owners can track not only their business name, but the names of their employees as well. And they can do it all from one centralized dashboard. SMBs can also take advantage of KnowEm’s social media monitoring and alert feature to help you watch hundreds of social networks and blogs for any mention of your brand, mark or trademarked terms. KnowEm presents this information in real-time and provides a number of ways to break it down, by trend, by author, by source and by geolocation (where available). They’re also in the process of rolling out sentiment analysis for their alert system, providing customers with another way to search and segment the data.

Basically, it’s everything you need to track about your business on the social Web thrown into one dashboard for easy monitoring. There goes your excuse for not being able to track your brand mentions and conversations.

I’ve been a fan of KnowEm since its initial release and it’s nice to see them making such great strides that benefit not only large clients, but small business owners as well. I know that many SMBs are intimidated by social media simply because it seems like there’s so much out there to track and watch. Well, KnowEm helps to take some of the load off so that you can track the conversations and mentions around your brand just like the big boys do. Through KnowEm you’ll also have access to their network research, will can help you identify which social sites are gaining popularity and which are dropping off. This may help you make decisions about where you should be investing the bulk of your time.

What about you? Are you currently using KnowEm?

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