So you’ve jumped into Social Media and are Tweeting, Following and Friending like a Pro. Great. You’re also commenting intelligently on blogs and sending out RT Luv on a regular basis. Fabulous. So – who’s talking about YOU, and what are they saying?
If you’re logging directly into Facebook and Twitter, you’re seeing your friends’ tweets and status updates (and paying attention, I hope?) – so you can see what they’re talking about about you. (whoa – that is worded weirdly)
But what about blog posts that mention you? Comments on blogs that mention you? Tweets that mention your name, but don’t DM you (add that @ symbol in front of your name) or refer to you by your domain name or a misspelling of your name? How do you monitor your brand and your reputation online?
Well, you can Google your name (and several variations, usernames, and your domain name) several times per day, OR – you can use some tools to keep track of this stuff (some more automatically than others).
The Premium Side
Premium services will track mentions of you anywhere on the internet and give you handy stats and graphs – they vary widely in price and services. (Never used any of these personally – anyone have any feedback on them?)
The DIY Side
If you don’t quite have the funds to shell out for the premium services, there are more manual ways of tracking your brand online. Most of these don’t come with the fancy charts and graphs and take a little more time to configure and check.
Track Comments
- BackType – Put in keywords and have alerts emailed to you, or subscribe to the RSS feed…and more
Track mentions on Twitter
- BackTweets – Put in keywords and have alerts emailed to you, or subscribe to the RSS feed. There is also a search bookmarklet you can snag.
- Tweetdeck – Keep track of people you’re following, mentions, search Twitter and more.
- Hootsuite – Keep track of people you’re following, mentions, get stats on your most popular tweets and more.
Track several services at once
- Google Alerts – Set up Google Alerts to google keywords you choose and send you an email at specified intervals
- WhosTalkin – Seems that you just have to log into their site for every search/no notifications. There’s an iGoogle gadget and a browser search plugin – RSS and Saved searches are suppossedly coming soon
- SocialMention – Put in keywords and have alerts emailed to you, or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can also put a widget on your blog. (this one seems super neato from the cursory lookover I gave it)
- HowSociable – Seems that you just have to log into their site for every search/no notifications. But it gives you a Score.
- Social Media Firehose (yahoo pipe) – Put in keywords and subscribe to the RSS feed
I’ve just scratched the surface on what services are available for tracking mentions on the interwebs – did I miss any that you use? Have you used any of the above and do you have anything to say about them?