Making noise on social media is easy. It’s the listening that takes a little finesse. I’ve gathered up some of our favorite FREE tools that make it easier to listen to what people are saying about your business online. These tools have had a little bit of staying power and while they might not provide you the most comprehensive information, they are a good start if you are just starting to monitor the conversations about your brand.
photo via flickr, copyright renrut
1. Trendrr This site offers a basic free service where you can track certain keywords and URLs using up to 10 different sites. You can upgrade to a paid service to get more options but this is a good way to get your feet wet. The graphs are visually appealing and you can also see the Trendrr made graphs featuring hot topics around the web.
2. Social Mention This one is my personal favorite. With a quick search, you can find out all the mentions of your selected keywords or URLs. They divide up the information in such a way that is very easy to decipher and use. It rates each mention as positive, neutral, or negative. Social Mention also measures passion, reach, and identifies the people that mention that keyword the most.
3. Technorati This is probably the most basic of listening tools. It doesn’t search some of the more popular social media sites but if you want to quickly see who has been linking to your site, this oldie but goodie does it well.
4. Board Reader Twitter and Facebook get a lot of hype these days but you can’t ignore what people are saying about you on message boards and forums. These are still very active social networks and can provide a wealth of information about what consumers really think about you or your product.
5. Google Alerts You can receive email alerts on any topic you wish to monitor. They pull information from all over the web. This isn’t the most sophisticated listening tool. You sometimes have to wade through a lot of irrelevant links but for the price (FREE!), and the ease of use (right to your inbox), it is definitely worth mentioning.
Last month I wrote a post talking about my experience with the Cornhusker Red Cross. It was called Using Twitter to Connect with Potential Customers. I thought for sure they would see that post and let me know about it. We have yet to hear from them. It’s possible they take their non-profit status seriously and don’t need to listen to their potential customers. Or maybe they need our help more than we thought.
