How to Monitor Your Brand With Ruby

The world of online brand monitoring can be a mystifying and unsure one at first. If you’ve just created a new brand, or you’re looking to invest more in your brand’s online presence, there is probably no better way to start that than to begin monitoring your brand online.

In this guide, we’re going to cover how to use ruby, a programming language, to perform what’s called web scraping all across the internet and put the information your patrons are saying about your brand into your hands. Using this ruby programming web scraper, as it’s called, you will be more in control and more confident when there are tricky shots to be called.

We’ll also delve a bit into the web scraping world outside of Ruby, complete with linked guides to put you in control. Are you ready to start monitoring your brand with Ruby?

Let’s get started!

Why Monitor Your Brand?

Knowing what the people of the world are saying about your brand is essential for any business owner who wants to grow. Understanding the sentiment of the people who experience your brand is the only sure way to see the impact–good or bad–your brand is making.

What’s more, if something goes wrong with your brand (some fatal mishap, perhaps), having your eyes on appropriate feedback channels can help you nip a problem in the bud before it becomes an issue.

And we’re not just talking about social media coverage. Using software to monitor your brand covers the incredible depth and breadth of the whole internet! Now, monitoring the entire internet would not be possible with one person; it wouldn’t even be possible with a massive workforce.

The only way to accurately monitor brand feedback across the world is via brand monitoring software.

Ruby, a well-known and respected programming language, can help.

What is Ruby?

Ruby is a programming language that was first developed by Yukihiro Matsumoto in Japan in the mid-1990s. Unlike some other programming languages, Ruby is interpreted, which means that its commands are executed immediately, rather than being required to be compiled into a computer language first.

Ruby is also a dynamic programming language. A dynamic programming language executes at runtime many of the common programming behaviors that other languages would typically execute during compilation. If this is above your head, don’t worry. You can read more about dynamic programming language if you’re interested, but just know that the fact that Ruby is dynamic makes it high functioning and perfect for monitoring your brand.

As a programming language, Ruby also automatically manages memory by discarding objects (like variables, data structures, functions, or methods) that are no longer in use by the program, called garbage collection. That Ruby uses garbage collection puts less pressure on the programmer and, in the end, the person using Ruby.

Lisp, one of the oldest families of programming languages currently in existence, served as the inspiration for Ruby.

How Can Ruby Help?

In essence, you need to know what is being said about your brand by the people out in the world and when. Chances are, you never hear about a majority of the positive and negative things that people are saying about your brand. Knowledge is power, as they say, and you can use Ruby to keep track of the words spoken by the internet’s various shadowy figures and, ultimately, to keep your brand on target for its goals.

To put it simply, Ruby can help you monitor your brand via a process known as web scraping. Web scraping is essentially automatically taking information off of the internet and depositing it in the hands of analyst software or anyone else who wants that information. Ruby as a programming language offers a multitude of tools for web scraping.

There are two very popular brand monitoring tools from Ruby called Nokogiri and Kimurai that are helpful for watching over the words spoken of your brand on the interwebs. Ruby programming makes this software easy to use and extremely helpful as brand monitoring tools.

What this software does is automatically scour the internet for data about your brand, and when they have found it, download that information in a way that is accessible to you (either CSV or JSON formats or in a file database). To learn more about these tools, read our in-depth guide for web scraping with Ruby.

Use Ruby To Monitor Your Brand

Once you’ve used our guides to track brand performance with Ruby, the process of actually monitoring your brand is a simple one. In the software we’ve mentioned above, all hits are deposited in a folder that will be known and easily accessible to you. You only need to access this folder and see if there are new entries on a regular basis.

With this software, you can guarantee that you have the most knowledge of anyone as to how your brand is being perceived.

Other Ways To Monitor Your Brand

Beyond Ruby, there are a vast array of ways to monitor your brand. Brand monitoring will always feature the use of web-scraping: it is simply the only efficient way to stay abreast of all the channels through which things can be said about your brand.

Using Javascript and Node.js, you can use a simple headless browser to take data from a dynamic website. What this means is that you can learn how to automatically scrap data from any common sources of brand feedback you’re acquainted with.

Follow our easy-to-learn guide here and get scrapping!

The Rosy Gleam of a Well-Monitored Brand

Now that you’ve learned about online brand monitoring with Ruby, the time is nigh to try it yourself. Remember that all news is good news in the world of brand monitoring: it can only help you, in the long run, to be more informed about how customers are taking your product.

Remember to follow our Ruby scraping guide, get up-to-date on our Javascript and Node.js guides, and become an even better brand manager. Good luck!

Author’s Bio

Christoph is a code-loving father of two beautiful children. He is a full-stack developer and a committed team member at Zenscrape.com – a subsidiary of saas.industries. When he isn’t building software, Christoph can be found spending time with his family or training for his next marathon.