Clearly, not every business can afford to pay for online brand monitoring services. But regardless of your size and budget, there are many free ways to monitor your online reputation. First off, why is online brand monitoring necessary? With the incredible growth of online social media, your customers or potential customers are relying more and more on peer reviews. What happens when a distraught customer vents about your company's products or services? Surprisingly, a single blog post or forum thread can cause immeasurable damage to a brand. If people begin linking to this item, it can start to rank on search engine below or even above your company website. In addition, online brand monitoring will allow you to identify positive feedback, and react accordingly. Below I've listed the tactics I currently use to monitor Palmer Web Marketing as well as other client's brands.

1. Omgili Searches: Do a search for your company or product name on Omgili. Omgili is a search engine that focuses exclusively on Forum threads and other customer generated content. You'll probably be surprised to find how many people are talking about your brand.
2. Google Alerts: Setup Google alerts for your company and product or service names. Google will email you every time it finds a blog post, press releases, or other document that contains the keyword(s) you specified. For more ideas on what to monitor, checkout 10 things you should be monitoring by Pronet Advertising.
3. Check Your Server Logs: Surprisingly, angry customers venting about your company will link to your website. By monitoring your web analytics, you'll find abnormal sources of traffic from these sources.
4. Technorati Searches: Technorati is a popular blog search engine. Doing a search for your brand name will return anyone who has recently blogged about your comapany.

Know any other low budget ways to monitor your brand online? Be sure to leave a comment.