How To Set Up Your Own Listening Post
Sophisticated Social Media Monitoring tools like Radian6 are terrific but if you’re working on your own stuff or a small business you can’t always justify the cost. Here’s how to set up your listening post / dashboard using free tools so that you’re tapped into what people are saying about you, your competition and your category. Here’s an example of a finished product.
Step 1. Do Your Keyword Homework There’s no getting around it. You need to start by identifying 3-5 important keywords or keyword phrases using Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).
Step 2. Create a Dedicated Google Account Something like “clientname.yourinitials@gmail.com”
Step 3: Set Up an iGoogle Page Visit the iGoogle page (http://www.google.com/ig). Delete the existing gadgets that are pre-populated by clicking on the little triangle in the top right corner of each gadget. Once you’ve cleared everything click on the “Add stuff” link on the right side of the page. Search for ‘Google Reader’ making sure it’s the official one from Google. Click the “Add it now” button and it will be added instantly to your iGoogle page. You’ll want to do this 4 or 5 times so you end up with multiple Google Reader windows. Just leave them there for now.
Step 4: Be Alert! Visit Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts and, using your keyword phrases, start to identify results that you’ll want to monitor. You can select Everything or just News or just Blogs. Preview results till you find a feed you’ll want to monitor. Then make sure you select deliver to ‘Feed’ vs. eMail. Once you’ve got one good result, start over with your next keyword phrase. When all your keywords phrases are done, enter the name of the business you want to monitor mentions of and that of your key competitors. Remember, you can use Google’s advanced search operators to refine the results to refine the results e.g. “collingwood –afl –england” and eliminate ‘noise’.
Step 5: Organize Your Reader View the results in Google Reader via your new Alerts page. You’ll want to organize your Reader by creating folders. I’d recommend creating a folder for each main topic eg. client, competition, product etc. Then place each search into the appropriate folder. On the left side of the Google Reader page you’ll see a list of your subscriptions that you created. Click on them one at a time and when it populates the main window click on the Feed Settings tab selecting the appropriate folder.
Step 6: Organize Your iGoogle Page Now you’re getting somewhere. Go back to your iGoogle page. In one of the Google Reader windows that you created earlier select one of your folders in the drop down menu in the upper left hand corner. Do this for each of the Google Reader windows you’ve created selecting a different folder for each. Add more Google Reader windows if you need to by repeating Step 3. It’s like building your own personalized morning paper so that you listen & learn only to what you need to.
.
Step 7: Add A Twitter Feed Visit Twitter’s Advanced Search tool (http://search.twitter.com/) and search for your keyword phrases, your client’s name and their competitors names with quotes. The advanced search can help you narrow down your results. Once you’re satisfied with what you’re getting, click on the RSS feed for these results. Oddly, I find it easier if I’m in Firefox or a browser other than Google Chrome when I’m doing this.
You’ll get two options. Add it to your new iGoogle Home Page and now you’ve got a steady stream of tweets to review each morning. Or, conversely, you could add multiple Twitter results into a folder on Google Reader and feed the consolidated stream onto your iGoogle page.
Step 8: Feed Your Reader Now that you’ve got the hang of it you can add any number of RSS alerts to your iGoogle homepage. Just look for that orange RSS symbol in handy places such as search results from Technorati, traffic trending of top sites via Alexa or, simply, key or friendly blogs in the category.
Step 9: Pimp Your Read There’s all sorts of other tools that you can add to your iGoogle Page so that you can monitor important trends and results. For example, you can take your top 5 keyword phrases and pump them into Google’s Insights for Search adjusting the geographic scope of your search. Any number of the results including the Trending chart, Top Searches or Rising Searches can be added to your iGoogle page by clicking on the little button in the lower left hand corner of each of these results. Now you can watch when a key term starts to decline seasonally and adjust your social media messaging or hitchhike on what’s hot by watching Rising Searches.
Or, alternatively, you can click on the ‘Add Stuff’ button on your iGoogle homepage and populate your page with new tools such as the brand new feed of your Google Analytic results. Now your morning paper is also starting to become a bit more of a dashboard.
Step 10: Rinse & Repeat Continue to play with iGoogle page, shifting windows around, deleting some feeds, refining others until you have a page that really helps you keep your ear to the ground and your hands upon the wheel.
Hope this helps.
Any questions, shout.
Bob Nunn is Internet Marketing Consultant in Toronto and the founder of BrandMechanics. Bob has a successful track record of helping companies fine-tune their online marketing and getting their brands revved up. He has won over 40 marketing awards for his work in advertising, new media, email and more for clients such as Yellow Pages Group ‘The Find Engine’, Blockbuster ‘Guaranteed To Be There’, FutureShop ‘You’ll like what the future has in store.’ and 3M ‘Innovation’ amongst others.
Leave a Reply
Get the SEP Newsletter
Great post. very practical tips. most people dont realise how much can be achieved for free if you set things up using various free tools.
may I suggest http://www.trackthisnow.com another free tool which covers more than 20 sources and even overlays it on a map.
Its also a useful way of finding bloggers/tweeters for any topic.
http://www.glerts.com/beta is a free service that adds analytics to your existing google alerts
Wow, that is very sophisticated. Right now I just use google alerts, I didn't know you could do all of this! Thanks.
[...] set up a listening post to monitor your own name. You can start at a very simple level by using Google [...]
Light bulb moment for me, Bob. I've been using all of these tools but had not thought about putting together this way. Frankly, it's brilliant in it's simplicity. I'm off now to build my own dashboard and I'll be including these steps in the social media section of my Business Startup Academy that I'm getting ready to kick off shortly.
Susan
[...] more than a minute or two, you've probably heard a lot of talk about "listening". Listening to the conversations about you and your brand is a VERY important part of effective social media marketing. It's a fundamental. It's [...]