Freelance web and seo copywriting from Mud Creative » Social media

Free Social Media Listening Tools

louise — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:03:56 +0000

Wouldn’t you just love to know what people are saying about your business on the Internet? Whether positive or negative (or dead silence, which is not great either), understanding how your company is perceived by others is an important part of knowing how to shape your product or service to satisfy them.

Mhairi Petrovic of Out-Smarts provided this valuable list of free tools in her January newsletter so you can be your own personal fly on the wall. She has kindly offered to let me post it on my blog.

Take it away Mhairi….

One of the best ways to explore whether social media is right for your company is to listen. Social media listening means using these tools to listen for mentions of your product or service, company, competitors and industry. By doing so you will get a great feel for what is being said about your product or industry, how people communicate, what is appropriate – and you might even learn a thing or two.

Here are some great tools you can use:

1. General:

Google – www.google.com
Google Alerts – www.google.com/alerts – this service sends e-mails outlining Google search result for your key-phrases.
Backtype – www.backtype.com/ – search terms, follow conversations.
Social Mention – www.socialmention.com – real time social media search and analysis.
Pipl – www.pipl.com – great tool for assessing your personal brand online across multiple social networks.
Trendrr – www.trendrr.com – social and digital media tracking.

2. Twitter:

Twitter Search – http://search.twitter.com/
Monitter – http://www.monitter.com/
Tweetlater – http://www.tweetlater.com/

3. Facebook: www.facebook.com

Facebook search – for people.
Facebook search – for keywords.
Facebook wall comments – Lexicon.

To subscribe to the Out-Smarts newsletter, visit www.out-smarts.com.

How To Gain Followers and Influence Tweeple – by Glenn Hilton

louise — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:13:11 +0000

I found this rich information-packed post on the Outsmarts Marketing blog. Definitely worth a read. I am still extracting nuggets from it to improve my own Twitter presence.

Dear Twitter . . . What I like about you.

Did it work? Tips on measuring the success of your online press release.

louise — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:02:51 +0000

Last week, I tuned into another valuable webinar hosted by PRWeb with Greg Jarboe, President and CEO of SEO-PR.

As we all know the Internet has changed the face of the press release. But what’s more, the web has changed the way we measure the effectiveness of it.

Back in the day, PR pros would use “clip books,” which contained clippings from publications that picked up the story, to prove success. But how many people read it and acted on it? Those numbers were simply not available. As Greg says, you can’t take the “clip book” to the bank.

The web gives us the tools to prove the true worth of a release.

• PRWeb reports – If you use PRWeb to distribute your release, you will have access to a host of reports including Headline Impressions and Full Reads. You’ll be able to see how many people actually read your release, clicked on a link or printed it out. (PRWeb will be introducing some new reports in the new future including reports of sites where your release appeared and actions taken from the release such as downloading a pdf or forwarding the release.)

• Connect the dots – If you have more than one property or brand, Greg recommends using your analytics to compare the number of queries (searches) of the promoted site or product against the unpromoted property.

• Were there conversions? – Embed a unique tracking link in your release and point it to a unique action-oriented landing page asking the visitor to fill out a form, download a pdf or buy a product.

• How do you measure the value of a “tweet?” –A Twitter search for your keywords will show you if your release is a topic of conversation as well as offer clues as to who may have blogged or will be blogging about your story. Greg says “Tweets are early morning radar to blogs that may show up later in the day.”

Greg points out that there is still value in the traditional press release, but with fewer and fewer journalists out there, it is harder to get coverage through these channels. “When you get it, it is precious and rare.”

You can view the PRWeb webinar with Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR here.

Tools to improve your social media listening skills

louise — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:09:41 +0000

With so many avenues of communication available online now, how in the cyberworld do you keep tabs on what is being said about your company, products and services, competitors and your industry in general? In her latest blog post, Mhairi Petrovic of Out-Smarts Marketing offers some suggestions for free and paid tools that will help you stay “in the know” online. Check out “Are you listening?”

Blogging. If it’s not part of your “here I am!” strategy – it should be.

louise — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:25:07 +0000

Today I had tea with a group of entrepreneurial women at the monthly WHO (Women in a Home Office) meeting. I was invited to share what I know about creating a flow of traffic to one’s website. Among other things, we discussed the importance of having and maintaining a blog as part of a strategy to increase exposure. This is a synopsis of my presentation:

Why is having a blog a good idea?

Your blog is a place to build your own community, to share what you know and to position yourself as an authority in your field.

• Showcase your expertise – Become a thought leader in your industry. Offer advice. Critique an industry book. Do a review of a trade show or industry event.

• Grow your business in specific areas – You have complete control over the content. You can slant your posts to talk about areas in which you want to build your business. For example, if you run a landscaping company and you want more work in landscape design, your posts can be related to things like “5 tips to design a maintenance-free flower garden.”

• Build customer relationships –Interested customers and clients-to-be will drop in from time to time to read your opinion on issues, to discover what’s new with your business, and to find out what events you’ve participated in. You’ll create a more personal relationship between you and your customers.

• Find new clients, specialists and associates – You never know who might be reading your blog. It could be a prospective client looking for someone with your expertise, or individuals whose special skills complement your business.

• Test ideas or products – Publish an idea for a product or service and see if it generates interest. Does anyone link to you? What do they say?

• Become more connected – Ask some of your associates to do guest posts, and provide posts for their blogs too. This shows how your network radiates outward and creates reciprocal links between sites (which helps your search engine rankings.)

• Rank higher in search engines – Search engines reward sites that are updated often with fresh content, that link to other related sites, and most importantly, that have many inbound links.

Tips for successful blogging

• Post consistently – every two weeks or once a month, but try to be consistent.

• Make each post approximately 500 words.

• Break your posts up into sections with subheads. Use bullets when possible for easy reading.

• Make it personal. Show your readers who you really are. Avoid corporate speak. Use first person.

• Participate in the conversation – Blogs enable readers to comment on a post. Good or bad, comments mean that people are reading and reacting to your posts. Be prepared to participate in the conversation by replying to comments openly and honestly.

• Follow other blogs in your industry and comment on them when you have something valuable to add to the conversation. (Your comment always includes a link leading back to your own blog.)

• Monitor what others may be saying about you or your company. Go to www.technorati.com and search for your name, your company name or your product name to see if bloggers are talking about you.

• Publicize each blog post through other social media channels like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

How to set up a blog

• If you don’t have a blog, setting one up isn’t too hard to do. There are plenty of blog services on which you can create and maintain your blog – and they’re free. My favourite is Wordpress.

• For comprehensive directions, check out this fabulous article on How to set up a blog for beginners.