With so much content and chatter being posted online each day, it can be overwhelming to track each social media outlet individually. Businesses and individuals can set up a listening post to track what is being said about them online. It is important to track the social media content, so businesses do not miss the opportunity to join in on the conversation and also to combat any negative chatter.
Listening to competitors, industry leaders, and customers can be the most productive way to use social media. This is a great way to stay on top of leading trends and to find out what customers want. Keeping tuned in is an affordable form of market research that can pay off.
Setting up a social media listening post with sites like Google Analytics, TweetDeck, HootSuite and Google Alerts is easy and free. Businesses cannot afford to not take advantage of these tools.
Google Analytics: This is a great tool to see where web traffic if being generated. Who is visiting your website and how did they get there? Find out what online initiatives are effective and which ones need to be tweaked by tracking the traffic.
TweetDeck: Mainly a platform for Twitter interactions, TweetDeck can be set up to track other social media outlets like Facebook and LinkedIn. You can set up feeds for keywords, so that with a quick glance you can see conversations involving relevant topics to you and your business.
Google Alerts: You can track keywords, business names, competitors’ names, hot topics, personal name, and links. Google Alerts will send you an email when these terms are searched and found. It’s that easy. You don’t have to stay glued to your computer and log into every site to see what’s being said. The information is sent directly to you.
You cannot control what other people say online, but you can be proactive. By setting up a simple and free listening post, you can be better prepared to engage in the conversations online. You will be positioned to take advantage of the powerful marketing opportunities in social media.
Free social listening tools are great, but for the enterprise user with financial room to maneuver, I would check out something from the social media business intelligence space.
Not only do you get the ability to listen, but you get the deep analytics so you can find out what’s driving the conversation in the socialweb. You will understand the underlying factors behind what drives people and makes them tick.
In addition, SMBI helps you correlate all of this social data with key performance indicators in your business. By tying unstructured data to your existing processes, you can accurately gauge how social chatter affects your businesses financial gains and losses. Can you name one C-Suite exec who doesn’t want to see how their business can make more money?
Mr. ROI, thanks for the compilation. For those on a budget, these free tools are excellent fall backs for listening to the social web. Otherwise, check out a social media business intelligence platforms for enterprise needs.
Cheers,
– Sergei Dolukhanov
@sdolukhanov (twitter)