Keeping track of everything that’s going on can be a challenge — especially with social media which moves at the speed of light. Netvibes is a great way to get an eyeball on what’s going on, all in one dashboard. Plus, it’s super easy to set up and also offers customization options if the default isn’t quite what you want. Better yet, you can easily setup a dashboard for each subject you want to monitor, making it simple to switch between. Here’s how to setup Netvibes for your own social media monitoring…
1. Enter a topic you want to track and click the “Dashboard it!” button
Choose an image from the popup window, and then you’re good to go.
2. Check out the News tab
Monitor mentions of your topic on various news services, including Google News, blogs, and Flickr.
3. Check out the Video tab
Monitor when videos about your topic are posted on YouTube, Truveo, Vimeo, Dailymotion or Metacafe.
4. Check out the Conversations tab
Keep track of mentions of your topic on Twitter (including hashtags), WikiAnswers, YahooAnswers, Topsy, blogs, and other social networks.
5. Check out the Google tab
Monitor searches of your topics using Google search for the web, video, bogs, news, images and books all in one place.
6. Add any additional content
You can add widgets to show you content from all sorts of social networks, websites, and specific searches. Or tailor your dashboard to have widgets which show you mentions of related topics as well.
7. Remove the General Tab
Click the name of the tab (General), click the Edit link next to the name. In the box that drops down click the Delete this tab on the right — agree to delete the tab forever.
This is just a preference, but in my opinion, the information in the General tab is way too general, and not necessarily useful for using Netvibes for social media monitoring. Feel free to keep it if you like it.
Follow this same procedure to remove any other tabs you don’t feel are useful. You can also rename tabs or add new ones.
8. Create additional Dashboards for new topics
In the upper right corner, click Dashboards, then New. Follow the same procedure that you did for the original Dashboard.
9. Save your work
Make sure you either sign up for an account or sign in to save your work. If you don’t, it may be available the next time you visit as long as you haven’t deleted any cookies from your laptop (and you’re visiting from the same browser and computer). Be safe, and just login to save.
How do you use Netvibes?