I’ve been using several “fast and free” social media monitoring tools for years now. When it comes to research, competitive analysis projects, background information for new business pitches – you name it, there’s a ton of uses for them. I first blogged on these sites about two years ago and looking back, I’m still using most of them.
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What am I not using anymore?
Google Reader: I admit it, I have not set up any recent RSS feeds and can’t recall the last time I logged into Google Reader, but this is still a great way to get several news feeds without clogging up your email.
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What am I still using?
Google Blog Search: From here you can limit your Google searches to blog content only.
Twitter Search: Twitter’s very own search feature, and its advanced search option, is still great, but I now use another “newer” tool to search tweets more often. (See BackType below!)
Social Mention: Still one of my favorite tools and I think they describe themselves best:
Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.
It allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.
Another plus, Social Mention also offers up the ability to set up daily alerts on your keywords.
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What have I added to the mix?
Addictomatic: This site will build out a tracking page that pulls content from Twitter Search, Google Blog Search, YouTube, WordPress, Ask.com, and other news and media outlets that looks like this one I just did on the keyword Philadelphia.
Once you set this tracking page up, turn it into a bookmark and you can click back to your page easily to get updated, real time content – so efficient, love this one!
BackType: While the basic Twitter Search feature is still a great way to check in on what people are tweeting on any given topic, this tool does a nice job of it and Twitter thought so too – they recently acquired the company. In addition to a robust search engine the results are delivered in a very clean and easy to peruse format.
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What are you using?
Are you monitoring your company’s employment brand and if so, are you using any tools above and beyond these? Let us know!
