Freelance web and seo copywriting from Mud Creative » Twitter

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.

Dear Twitter . . . What I like about you.

louise — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:02:47 +0000

Have you heard this one? “I just don’t get Twitter.”

Twitter is a free service that lets you micro-blog at whim using just 140 characters to say something really deep – or something terribly shallow, depending on your mood.

For months, my Twitter page said the same thing: “Trying to find out what’s in Twitter for me.” My picture was the generic Twitter icon. Every now and then, I would look at people’s tweets, shrug and do something else. Then something changed…

Last February, I attended the Northern Voice blogging and social media conference in Vancouver. Looking around the room, I noticed that about 85% of the attendees were either live-blogging or tweeting. It was amazing to me that what would otherwise be considered rude behaviour was actually encouraged! (It was a blogging conference, after all.) After listening to the presenters and learning more about Twitter, I decided to give it a fair shot.

In the next week, I devoted more time to Twitter and things started to gel. I soon discovered that I was looking forward to checking the tweets of those I followed. After a little while, I added a comment here and there. It got easier and easier, and now Twitter is a guilty pleasure for me.

What’s in Twitter for me (and you)?

I recently spoke at a Women in a Home Office meeting on the ways to send more traffic to one’s website. Among other social media channels, we discussed what is Twitter and how to use Twitter.

I outlined the many ways that Twitter has been useful to me:

I have made connections with other writers, marketers and SEO experts around the world.
My followers read my tweets, which often leads them to read my blog.
I use Twitter to promote my new blog posts, and other people on Twitter retweet (RT) me, which creates a viral marketing effect.
I found a tweet for a time-limited offer to download an excellent ebook called SEO Secrets.
Donna Papacosta, a writer in Ontario, was looking for a video cameraman in Edmonton. I just happened to know of one.
I found an easy recipe for Pesto Chicken – that’s right, a recipe in 140 characters!
I follow WestJet on Twitter to learn about time-sensitive deals on flights.
I find new blogs through Twitter on topics of interest. If I leave comments, they link back to my site, thus increasing my number of inbound links.

Twitter is immediate and emotional and quite captivating once you get the hang of it. Twitter is used by real people in real time to talk about things that affect them and, often, the rest of the world. The latest events (like the election in Iran) are captured by real people – not biased media reports.

What I like most about Twitter is that I can leverage this channel in bits and bites. Just a few minutes here and there can net good results.

If you’re not on Twitter, but you would like to be, don’t worry about being new to the channel. Just take birdie steps and pretty soon, it will come naturally.

How do you Twitter?

If you’re on Twitter, how have you found it helpful in your business or personal life?