Over the years I’ve written about the importance of your food truck’s online reputation management on Mobile Cuisine. During the time in which the mobile food industry has seen monumental growth, there has been even more growth in online review sites that can influence where consumers eat out.

Because of this, it has become even more important for food truck owners to make sure they are engaged with their customers online. The problem becomes that there are dozens of sites where your customers could be talking about your mobile food business and there are only so many hours in the day.

I am not suggesting that you should spend your time combing the internet for every last mention of you or your food truck. What this article is intended to do is to show you that there’s an easy way to manage the most important mentions of your food truck empire and quickly decide where to respond without adding a lot of work to your already busy day.

The best part…IT’s FREE!

You Food Truck’s Online Reputation And Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a way to make the most popular search engine in the world work specifically for you and your food truck business.  By entering your food truck name as a keyword in Alerts; Google will keep an eye out for that name on every webpage it crawls.

Every time Google’s crawler finds a mention of your food truck business name it will save it to a report.  That report is automatically emailed to you every day where results are found.  This way you can sit back, check your email, and watch for the places on the internet where your customers are talking about.

How To Set Up A Google Alert:

  • Go to Google Alerts.
  • Click the “Alerts” under the Specialized Search section.
  • Enter the keywords you want Google to search for and the email address you want them sent to.

That’s it, you’re done.

Suddenly managing your food truck’s online reputation just got a whole lot easier.  You’ll want to still check up on business on the sites such as Yelp to make sure important comments don’t slip past.

Be sure you refine the keywords you use to search for customer comments based on what Google Alerts is sending you versus what you find when you do a search.

Refining Your Search:

  • Use quotes (“ “) around your truck’s name to make sure results match the phrase exactly and not just partially.  This will help limit the number of irrelevant results you get, but may cut out some relevant ones as well.
  • Experiment with some common variations of your food truck’s name to make sure you are catching all the references your customers might be using.

RELATED: Annoying Social Media Trends Every Food Truck Vendor Should Avoid

The Bottom Line

Google Alerts is a quick, free and easy way to help you manage your food truck’s online reputation.  Be sure to start taking advantage of this free tool today.