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46 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools | In My Opinion

March 4, 2010 By 4 Comments

Who does what, where and how? Are you measuring up against your competition? There’s a lot of social media buzz going on. What are they talking about your brand and your company? We have compiled a list of 46 free social media monitoring tools. Some of the tools have free basic plan or free trial period but most of them are totally free. The list is sorted alphabetically. Enjoy! If we missed any great tools please post them to comments.

via 46 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools | DreamGrow Social Media.

In My Opinion

On March 15, 2010 I will be giving a presentation at the AAF – Madison Social Media workshop. My topic is social media tool selection.  I intend to talk about  social media  “sites” as tools.  These are the social sites that a company would use to implement a strategy.  The other tool is really the assessment and monitoring tool a company would select to find their starting point and monitor success, ROI and change. In an effort to collect some  of the assessment tool information in one place I will build on some of the great posts and research already done on the key blogs I follow.

As I try to follow the “free” first rule of thumb, I currently use Google Alerts, Scout Labs, Technorati and Addictomatic.  I also try different ones during a free trial period to make sure I know the difference between tools.

If you use a tool that has done a good job for your – free or paid – please share it in the comment section below.

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What Makes a Blog Successful | Thoughts on Blogs 12-18-09

January 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment
A segment of a social network
Image via Wikipedia

This is my continued effort to follow the Social Media Academy NCP Model (Network Contribute  Participate). I choose to visit various blogs on B2B strategies, marketing, customer focused strategies, business development, engineering, product development and social media. From these collected comments, I create a post of what are the best of the week.  I hope you enjoy.

What makes a successful blog – Real Time Marketer

I believe that the #1 factor for blog success, is the frequency of your posts.  Mashable and TechCrunch, are respectably the #1 and #2 most popular social media blogs.  They average over 20 posts per day.  I understand they both have teams of paid writers to continuously spit out post after post…but I am constantly checking out their sites because I know they have good quality, and I know
that information will be new and constant. It is not realistic and probably not appropriate for you to be writing 20 articles per day, but you do need to consistently be writing new content.  Social Media, more than ever, is truly an out of sight out of mind medium.  If you aren’t continuously contributing content, or posts, or tweets…you do not exist.

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In response to the above statement I, Wendy Soucie,  commented:

I also believe consistency is a factor – although if you do nothing to promote the blog it won’t matter how regular you are if no one knows it.  Making sure you understand title and keywords and the role they play to get found are also high on the list.

I have done the following to generate a consistent pattern in my posting for my social media blogs:

1. Sunday is a Twitter weekly update – I generate this automatically but go back in, edit generate a tweet cloud picture and add tags, and review.

2. Monday is a Wisconsin Social Media day where I post to my secondary blog on Wisconsin business and social media issue.  I also  comment on some news activity from the past week or weekend.  I will start posting a monthly case study interview of Wisconsin companies that are using social media, their strategies and success measurements.

3. Tuesday is a Tip and Technique day that I offer on one of the social media tools I use or train on.

4.  Wednesdays are a participation and contribute day where I search for topics and comment on other peoples blogs.  I either visit blogs I follow or use Google Alerts on keywords and phrases to find new conversations in the social ecosystem.  I collect these comments – pick a theme and post this as a collection later on in the week.

5. Wednesday and Thursday are opinion post days.  I add one to my personal blog and I add another to a column on social media I have on Madison Social Media Examiner.com (this one at least monthly)

6. Friday is thoughts on blogs day – so I take my comment compilation and post that.

7. Weekends I work on the start of articles for the next week or future.

8. Sundays I look at the posts for the week and consider some for repost on places I guest blog  such as Customer Think, Social Media Today, Social Media Academy, or End Result Marketing.

I don’t always make all my deadlines, but I am hitting my minimum target of three posts a week.

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Social Competition – Social Media Today

Axel Schultze had an interesting post on social competition.

“The discussions whether Social Media is a fad or why corporate executives don’t see the opportunity are pretty much history. With the inception of reporting tools, methods to measure success and models and frameworks to articulate strategies – social media entered the board rooms. And pretty quickly social media became a competitive weapon.

Competition for mind share, competition for group or community members, competition for influence. And it is also competition for better solutions co-created with the users who establish a sense of ownership and help promote the products they at least influenced. It is a competition for the more engaged support community where user support user and augment to company support team. It is competition for the smarter sales teams which may quickly develop larger and more influential social networks, with better customer relationships in those networks.”

Axel,
Here are my thoughts for the class based on some of my experiences with business over the past 6 months.  Many of the SMB that I call on are waiting to see case studies, ROI, and have “prove it to me stances”. The are very reactive in their thinking. Conversations about social competition might me the best Ah ha moments to move these organizations into action. For many, they are programed to react not lead.

Teaching people to lead by engaging in social media where listening to customers sets the trends for what they do is an important aspect of this potential class.

If SMBs have this perspective, white papers and ebooks developed thru such a leadership class would be incredibly effective. I know the past classes offered did this but were they promoted enough?  I think this should be a core result of each class.  A recent research survey on what info c-level executives find the most value: WhitePapers and ebooks.

Another piece of information from the various presentations I have given is the concern by company execs about how much email will be in their mailbox if they engage in any social media efforts.  Somehow they don’t equate social media personal connections with valid email from customers or potential customers.  This needs to change if execs are to understand the much bigger picture of their customer mindset.

In such a class,  I would also like to see significant time spent on benchmarking competitive intelligence, market info and strategies to manage the information that you do collect in a logical way.

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Social Media 401: Vince Muzik Case Study – Social Media University Global

Lee Aase speaks and teaches others about social media at Social Media University Global. I love visiting his blog because I can learn something new and because I find Lee very encouraging to me personally (he is willing to share knowledge of value).  He answers my comment posts (he is listening), he provides real examples (shares his experiences), he tries things himself and reports (shows us what works for him and Mayo Clinic). In this recent post, he is encouraging of using video to contribute to the blog experience. He highlighted a friend, Vince Muzik,  who is doing a social media documentary on the No 1 football recruit Seantrel Henderson.

In response to his post I added:
Lee,
I wish some of my video projects were about someone as exciting as the number one recruit.  They are me video blogging right now.  Although my friends (via their comments) are visibly entertained by not so much my content – but how I am doing it.

I just don’t think I am that interesting.  However, I am going to start interviewing people who are using social media in a business setting. Capture what they think worked and what didn’t as an alternative. My first one is going to start in January and will be on a startup called Cupcakes A-GoGo. They are using Facebook and Twitter along with traditional print advertising to get the word out. They were great fun (tasty too) to interview.

Its likely not something that a national publications would latch on to my stream but its all I have right now. SMUG still a good deal to make me use the tools and practice.

And since Lee is very engaged, he responded to my comment:

Don’t sell yourself short, Wendy. The whole idea of social media is that you don’t need to appeal to a mass audience. Your goal should be to provide relevant, helpful information and connect with a community. You’re doing some great things with your blog, tying some other platforms together. And it all comes down to using the tools to accomplish your goals. Vince is doing some interesting things,
and I just told his story because I’ve known him for a long time and he’s been stopping by for some tips and inspiration. I would welcome others doing posts here in the 400 series about how they’re using social media practically, whether others would think it’s “glamorous” or not.

Where have you engaged with others in the social ecosystem this week?

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Reality check for Twitter and Business Use – Part 2

December 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A reality check for Twitter: what’s next for businesses now that the hype’s wearing off? (part 2 of 3)

A reality check for businesses using Twitteretcloud121209

Twitter is primarily aimed at individuals, but Twitter’s popularity is driving many businesses to explore the microbogging tool.  It has been said that social media is hard to understand from the outside looking in. Nowhere is this more obvious than Twitter. But its also very important to listen first. Unfortunately, without going out to research and follow people, you won’t see any conversations.

Potential users are wondering how best to use Twitter and how to get started.  What’s the right business goal? Manage public relations? Be your own best news and update source? Drive the most hip and attentive customer service group? Provide only casual conversations with customers? Let the sales team connect with far flung internal team members?  Promote a blgo? Its hard to say.

But jumping in without deciding on the business goal, strategy and tactical approach before talking could alienate those very people you want to engage.  It takes time to be one of the 198 Zappos employees who are delivering happiness by using Twitter.

Social media users on LinkedIn have had a space controlled connections and relative ease of use and safety.  As they are now trying Twitter, many are faced with a free for all friend and follow system. This  scares some business users so much they delete their profile and leave the site.

Gartner published a report breaking down Twitter uses. Let’s look at the pros and cons of ways Twitter could be used for business:

Direct: Push messages out; one-way scenario

  • Pros: Typically this is done by a Brand profile. This can work effectively if you have followers for your brand profile.  By only pushing messages out and intentionally avoiding having any conversations you limit the possible chances any employee can say or do anything wrong or controversal.  However, if you are only pushing a message out, you obviously only see Twitter as a free advertising mechanism.  Your followers won’t ride with you for very long.
  • Cons: The general social media user audience may have a negative view of how you are using Twitter. especially if you don’t indicate that your profile is just a feed.  Worst case is that you will get noticed, but by bloggers who can be pretty harsh. You may find yourself as an example on a blog – not the best publicity. And really, we are human so count on someone doing  or saying something wrong.  Prepare, determine an escalation plan, determine a spokesperson and create some policy to help your staff.

The BoduBlog:

The social networking revolution isn’t just about you putting out messages about your brand – it’s about constantly listening to what’s being said about your brand, and twitter makes that delightfully simple – To use twitter or any other social networking tool effectively, you have to think in wider terms than simply sending out ‘we’re great’ tweets daily. 

  • Recommendation: Be sure to indicate the feed is not interactive. If this is a pure coporate profile, then you may have a team managing the posts. It will be important that they are trained together and have consistent presentation and message.

Example: Business News @e24business is only a news feed but no note, McAfee News Feed includes the non interactive statement

Indirect: Letting employees tweet, converse and grow their personal brand, enhancing company brand as well.

  • Pros: If you have selected the right employees to get started with this, and they are on social media with the right policy understandings and guidelines, this can work very well for the company. If they are committed to Twitter then their popularity can reflect well on the brand.
  • Cons: This can also reflect negatively on the company brand should policy, guidelines or decorum not be followed.
  • Recommendations: Add statement of “opinions expressed are my own”on the account, but it still we refelct on the brand.  This could be a employee with a branded account, or an employee with a personal account.  Follow a 80/20 rule either way.  If the former then 80% of your tweets corporate news, information of value, and  20% conversation and personal.  20% if the other 80% is done, can be justified for business.  Of that 5% direct promotion of product, services, or event (unless the event is educational in nature). If you are the later – employee with a personal account, they 20% business related and 80% personal.

Example: Zappos – @zappos_sole_man


Internal: Having conversations internal to the organization across departments or offices

  • Pros: The platform is free. You can make your tweets private and only allow in your friends or fellow workers.
  • Cons:Its not really that secure.
  • Recommendations I would not recommend using Twitter in this way. There are better and more secure sites or software available to do this such as the Yammer or Salesforce.com Chatter application.

Example: Can’t find any – its internal and private

Inbound: Using Twitter as listening and trend tracking tool

  • Pros: You can capture real time information and trending on topics. Competitive intelligence and business research professionals love Twitter for the insight it can bring.
  • Cons: You will need to spend some time interpeting and following links to gather the intelligence that is linked to the 140 character posts.
  • Recommendations: If you are looking for free applications and tools, use Twitter in conjunction with Google Alerts and more specific /niche search tools to dig up the info you are trying to find. Most of the social media tools require you to have a profile on the account inorder to fully search the site. Even so, privacy settings for individuals will be in effect.

Example: sites like Trendmap.com and Twendz can help get you started on Twitter info searchs

Twitter isn’t the end-all-be-all it has been hyped up to be, but in my the next blog I’ll discuss key demographics and potential Twitter applications that make sense for nearly all businesses to explore. 

How are you using Twitter today?

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