As we’re all aware, the power of social media is the ability to have conversations. Half of a conversation is listening. And you need to be a good listener to have good conversations. Monitoring what’s being said about you on social media will help you have better conversations. Here are some easy ways to monitor what’s being said about you:
- Google Search – Just put your name, company name, product names, etc. into Google’s regular search and check up on what’s being said about you from time to time. Google’s search now picks up some social media such as Twitter, Facebook & Google Buzz (among others).
- Twitter Search – Twitter moves much faster than many other types of media, so you’ll probably want to use the feed in the upper right to add your searches to a RSS reader (like Google Reader or NetVibes) so you can monitor them daily.
- Facebook Search – Most of the results are geared towards finding people, but it will also give you mentions by your friends and results across the web from Bing. This can be useful for monitoring what people already in your network are saying about you (especially useful for identifying influencers).
- Google Blog Search – Very useful for keeping tabs on the blogosphere where people are very likely to post opinions or comments. Also has a RSS feed so you can monitor it from a RSS reader.
- Technorati – I recommend searching with the following settings: “return” set to posts, “search in” set to all, “filter by” all topics and any authority, “sort results by” date. Technorati will give you an idea of the authority of any site based on the authority of sites linking into it. Unfortunately, Technorati partnered with Ingboo for their RSS feeds, which basically makes the feeds useless.
There are many other ways to monitor what’s being said, but I hope these give you some quick ways to start. You’ll notice that many are built on searches. You should search for your company name, any product or service names, and if you’re a small company or your personal brand is important, your name as well.
Do you have any other ways to quickly and easily monitor social media?
Technorati tags: social media, analytics, statistics, marketing, Facebook, social networking, business