How do you monitor what people say about your company in social media outlets?

You can also use Google news and create an email alert on a specific search string like your business or product name to get emailed (or RSS) whenever you are mentioned. Not sure if this will include Google's caffeine results (social search results).

There are companies, such as Radian 6, which develop tools specifically for monitoring social media sites such as Twitter.

Often, these tools are looking beyond mere mentions (or page views in the case of blogs) to understand the nebulous and important concept of "influence."

Influence matters because not all mentions are created equal. Of course, every customer matters, but some people have broader networks and reach than others. Influence is one gauge of that reach.

So, in addition to monitoring for your brand name on social media, check out tools like TweetLevel, which help determine the influence of the people talking about your company.

Hi Courtney,

Building upon what Zach has already mentioned, create alerts on Google Alerts and choose alert type as RSS. Create an account on TwitterFeed and submit the "alerts rss" feed to your TwitterFeed account, then connect your TwitterFeed account to a protected Twitter account.

This way any "buzzword" that you monitor will be tweeted to the protected Twitter account automatically, making it easier to monitor the entire web at no expense to you.

All paid service providers use this method, you shouldn't pay for something that is available freely.

There is also Neilsons blogpulse tool which is really good. http://www.blogpulse.com/

hope it helps,

Personally I would give CrowdControlHQ a go. Unlimited buzz monitoring, with some other really great tools for managing social media accounts.

http://www.crowdcontrolhq.com

I hope that helps!

Calum

+1 on Alterian SM2. I'm not quite as biased as Mark, but I've been working with them on taking the social data to the next level. Namely, how do you take data in the social space and begin applying to real marketing questions like media mix optimization, campaign performance analytic, market research, etc.

Zach Hoffer Shall over at Forrester probably has put the best name on this in calling it social intelligence. When looking at the SMM space I think looking beyond the recording of the data itself to what you can actually do with it is hugely important.

- Tewks
themarketingmojo.com

Oh, I've also been doing a webinar project for Optify and using their solution for monitoring and scoring leads.
http://optify.net

Hi Courtney!

I use a mixture of our own platform Attensity360 (disclosure: I work for Attensity) plus Tweetdeck to track general conversations. Tracking through Attensity360 has allowed me discover blogposts, news articles, tweets, videos, discussion threads, Qs on LinkedIn Answers that I wouldn't be able to find otherwise. Not only do I look for people speaking about Attensity's products, but I also find the most important and impactful conversations had by thought-leaders and analysts about the larger topics. It's definitely allowed me to build stronger relationships on that front as well.

I'd encourage you to not only track your own brand name and product names, but also track mentions of key execs and spokespeople for the company, as well as mentions of competitors, their products, and general industry terms.

Hey Courtney,

I know I may be biased here, but have you taken a look at Alterian? The SM2 (social media monitoring) platform really gives you the opportunity to slice and dice data to see what people are saying and determine what are you doing right, and what can you do better.

The first step when breaking into researching this type of tool is knowing what your goals are. Are you looking to create a Facebook or Twitter account? or are you looking to monitor campaigns? these are all questions you need to ask yourself when considering these powerful tools.
http://socialmedia.alterian.com/our-solutions/social-media-monitoring

Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions.
@markstolte

Hi,
I'm a huge fan of Social Mention! I have been able to engage passive users of our products which makes our company look very proactive. It's an easy tool that takes a few seconds to setup, I would highly recommend it to any marketer.

Hi Courtney,

Great question. Rather than jump into the "how," it can help to take a step back and determine why you want to monitor what people say about your company (e.g. what business goals would you like to achieve - both short and long-term). Thinking about this helps determine a strategy for how (and "who"). For example, a marketing group may want to measure and analyze trends associated with a specific campaign. A customer service department may want to engage and solve customer problems via social media. A Product Manager may not have time to learn and use any monitoring system, but still would like a snapshot overview and relevant posts (e.g. feedback on a new product launch) routed to them to drive future product improvements. These are all examples - but my point is that different business functions have different listening and engagement needs, and it can be beneficial to start small, develop a listening strategy, and then work on determining how that initial listening strategy and evolve to benefit the organization as a whole. This strategy helps amplify the voice of the customer across the enterprise.

As for specific tools - there are some great suggestions above, and I would also suggest establishing criteria that will help achieve short term goals but also has the flexibility and scalability to support where you ultimately want to go with your social business strategy (disclosure: I work for a major social media monitoring vendor).

Ryan
@Strynatka

Viralheat (viralheat.com) is great and inexpensive.

Are you already considering options like Google Reader , technorati.com, omgili.com and backtype.com ? You can set up searches with all of these free services and then establish an RSS feed from the search results page. You can then have that RSS feed either emailed to you, pulled into an RSS reader or you can visit the bookmarked page each day. This is a more reasonable solution for the small to medium size business who isnt going to invest in a Radian6 equivalent. Hope that helps.

Chris Brashear
@chrisbrashear

Some of the free tools are excellent including Equentia, BackType, Northern Lights and Yacktrack. Lots more PR social media monitoring & research resources at http://www.theprcoach.com/research-pr/media-monitoring/
Jeff

Hi Courtney

We have an agency that works on it for us, but they use the Tweetdeck to track twitter, and tie everything into google analytics.

Radian 6, Tracckr, Omniture, Google Alerts, sweat equity.

Great question, Courtney. I compiled a list of all the tools I could find that do something for Social Media ROI. I'm still working on it. Started at 195 Tools and I'm well over 200 now. Just a simple list at this blog post.

http://www.salesrescueteam.com/social-media-measurement-tools/

There's a pretty nice analysis of Social Media Monitoring applications done by an independent third party UK firm:

http://shared.freshminds.co.uk/smm10/whitepaper.pdf

It compares a few of the top firms. I'm from Scout Labs but it rates other ones as well.

Best of luck
@georgenixon

In addition to the list mentioned so far, Position2 Brand Monitor http://brandmonitor.position2.com/ is the platform you should take a look at. Brand Monitor has been designed for enterprises and agencies, enabling them to:
• Monitor social media conversations in real-time
• Track brands across social media, blogs, news, discussion forums, video and photo sharing sites
• Engage directly via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Track all engagement in a single system.
• Get daily and weekly conversation summaries across media channels
• Filter actionable, high priority conversations from the noise
• Identify influencers talking about brands/products/services
• Get detailed analytics and in-depth reports on the entire process and lot more

Disclaimer: I work with Position2

Take a look at Position2 Brand Monitor: http://brandmonitor.position2.com/. Comes in 4 editions, including a completely free Basic Edition with no time constraints. Brand Monitor is great for tracking conversations, gauging sentiment and share of voice, getting a dashboard of mentions and also has Twitter and Facebook functionality built in.

Disclaimer: I work with Position2.

I've got a specific need and would be grateful if anyone could help - we are interested in using a tool to monitor conversations that take place within an association listserv. It is password-protected, but we can provide legitimate logins.

I know that BuzzMetrics can handle this, but am learning whether other tools can do this as well.