Do you know what people are saying about your company? Do you know what they are saying about your brand? Do you know what they are saying about you?
Of course keeping an ear to the ground and being in tune with what your clients, target market and even employees are saying is crucial in this day and age of social media. Here are some simple ways to “listen” to what you people are saying.
- Google Alerts - This is a simple & free service provided by Google to monitor what they find for specific words that you choose. For example, if I set up an alert about “Tennessee Titans” I can choose to have Google contact me via email or an RSS feed everytime something new is found. You can choose your notification preferences as well. Setup your alerts at Google here.
- Twitter Search – Twitter search is actually my #1 way to keep up and listen because it’s in real time. Much like a Google search, you can type in a company, brand, person or any word and find out what people are saying at that exact moment. It also refreshes and updates automatically. You can do this by visiting search.twitter.com
- One other way to do this without ever visiting the twitter website is to setup a desktop program like Seesmic Desktop or Tweetdeck. Both are great and allow you to setup searches that will monitor Twitter in real time.
- Yahoo Pipes - Another great and growing tool is Yahoo Pipes. Basically you create the “pipes” of data that you want to pile/mashup into one viewing place. You have a ton of control setting up your pipes and filtering to find the content you really want. Setup your “Pipes” here.
- Facebook Lexicon – Here’s a great tool that gets over looked often. However, with the amazing popularity of Facebook, it’s time to pay attention to this one. You have to login to use, but try it out here.
- Trendrr – This site is in beta but has huge potential to keep you up to date. Much like Google Trends (on steroids) this tool will help you keep up with keywords, brands, people and companies and how they are trending in use on the web. Sign up for the beta and try it out here.
Those are some simple and free tools that will get you started on monitoring and listening for your brand, company or even yourself. Got some other tools you love? I’d love to hear about them!