5 Quick Tools for Listening in on Social Media

I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel last weekend for the Hoosier Chapter of the PRSA’s Social Media Bootcamp. There was quite a bit of talk around tracking your brand through conversations online. How do you you track your brand online? How do you keep up with the mass of people joinging into the conversation? And the most important thing of all… how do you do it cost effectively and easily.

There is a specific company (Radian6) that we talked about on the panel because of their UNBELIEVABLY cool tools for tracking and monitoring brands online. There is of course a cost involved for the Radian6 product. If you have any questions be sure to contact Amber Naslund on Twitter (@ambercadabra). But knowing Radian6… she has already posted a comment on this blog…

and I haven’t even published it yet.

If you are looking for some quick and dirty ways to start following and monitoring your (company or personal) brand online… here are 5 quick tips to get started.

1. Google Alerts

Google Alerts allows you to track your name or any keyword through an email notification. Any time your search term is discovered online you will receive an email from Google.. ALERTING you of the new link. Google Alerts can be a little slow in the long run but if you are budget sensitive this is a great place to start.

Watch the video below from Mindy at YourWebCoaches and learn how to setup an alert.

2. Social Mention

Social Mention is quick and easy way to search for the conveted keyword throughout the web. Simple user interface (much like google). If you want a quick way to search for brand names and conversation surrounding certain names… Social Mention is a good way to go.

3. Spy

Here we have a new guy in the race for total brand monitoring domination. I was tipped on Spy from KDPaine’s post about monitoring your brand online. It is a pretty simple tool to use and is contained to more of the conversation’s happening online.. instead of direct links. The easy to use interface keeps it simple… and we love simple.

4. Use Twitter Search

If you are using Twitter… which many of us are now… you know how hard it is to follow all the conversations. It is important to utilize this tool to follow conversations on this growing social network. If you are using TweetDeck it is extremely to follow the conversation surrounding your name. I like to use Twitter Search to follow certain trends (social media marketing) or people (competition perhaps?).

5. Track Blog Comments on Backtype

Backtype is a service that “lets you find, follow and share comments from across the web. Whener you fill out the “Website” or “URL” field in a comment form when you publish a comment on a blog of other website, BackType attributes it to you.”

It is a cool tool because you can track your comments over the expanse of the web. One of the best features of Backtype is the Connect feature. The Connect feature allows you to search for comments and conversations around a specific post or article. Check it out and test it… pretty cool stuff!

Now get out there and start tracking! It is important to be in the game and be involved in the game.