How to listen Online

By now you are probably up to date with the social media tools if you are reading this blog, ie twitter, facebook, Linked In, etc but have you considered monitoring the conversation others are having about you and your brand?  Well it is big business and this sort of marketing intelligence is something that is worth knowing about.

For we small business there are a couple of free or affordable tools that we can investigate to monitor this conversation.

1. Google Alerts  - this free quick tool allows you to follow and monitor key words on google. You can put in your own name, competitors, topics and track the conversation. This is useful information that can open up some interesting opportunities.

2. Trackur.com - this is available free for 14 days and is similar to Google Alerts but gives some more depth to the information. ie email, RRS and SMS.

3. Tweetdeck.com - this allows you to follow tweets based on your own search criteria.

4.Trucast - more sophiscated software to monitor, optimise and manage their online presence.

5.Whostalking - search and retrives information about the search term.

6. Background checks - will let you search on a person and show you details about them and how to find them.

7. Brandseye.com - this is a more sophicated program and so costs more but the benefits are that it allows you to monitor your brand more and protect your reputation across more social mediums.