A lot of you may already have a system in place for monitoring social media. It’s probably more in-depth than this. Good for you. Mozy along, this post isn’t for you.
A lot more of you don’t. You have no idea if someone blogs about you, or your company, unless someone else tells you. That is bad.
Here are six steps that will get you started with monitoring. This is not a comprehensive monitoring system. It’s simple, it’s quick (10 minutes time) and it’s better than nothing.
Don’t bookmark this and say “I’ll do it later.” Do it now.
1) If you don’t have one already, set up a Google account here. It’s free, it takes about two minutes and you need it for everything else in this post.
2) Set up Google Reader - http://www.google.com/reader - . This allows you to aggregate content from different websites into one place. You can subscribe to news sites and blogs (like this one, ahem.) You take something like this: http://beingcheryl.com/feed, click the “Add a subscription” button in the top left corner and paste it in. Most sights will make it easy for you, like this one: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/agent-seo You just click the +Google button there. I’d recommend finding a lot of good blogs about your industry (try: Technorati) and subscribing to them, but that’s not what we’re worrying about right now.
3) Create a folder in your Google Reader for your name and your company name. In the left sidebar at the very bottom click “Manage Subscriptions.” Click the “Add to a folder” button twice and name each folder appropriately.
4) Set up a Google Alert- http://www.google.com/alerts - for your name and your company name. Also set one up for links coming into your personal and/or company website, like this - link:www.yoursite.com. Click “Deliver to Feed.” When you go back to your Google Reader, you will be able to drag the feed into the appropriate folder.
5) Set up a Google Blog Search - http://blogsearch.google.com for your name and your company name. Click “RSS” in the left sidebar and paste the link into your Google reader. When you go back to your Google Reader, you will be able to drag the feed into the appropriate folder.
6) Set up Twitter feeds - http://search.twitter.com - for your name and your company name, and your Twitter names, and any common misspellings. After you click “search” you will see a “Feed for this query” link in the right. Paste that link into your Google Reader.Here’s a post on using search operators - you might need some to get the best results. When you go back to your Google Reader, you will be able to drag the feed into the appropriate folder.
Skim the results. Daily. Rinse and repeat.
Listening and Monitoring Panel at Inbound Marketing Summit | Being Cheryl says:
[...] of what you want to monitor, start with simple, free tools to get an idea of what is out there. Here are 6 steps to get you started. Share and [...]
Oct 04, 2009, 2:26 pm