Building Your Own Social Media Listening Tool
Posted: July 7, 2010 by Nate Bagley - Social Media Strategist
Tags: FriendFeed, Google Alerts, Listening Device, Social Media, Social Media Basics, Social Mention
There was a lot of talk at the recent Mindshare User Conference regarding Social Media. People want to know how to participate, or even control the Social Media buzz surrounding their brand. It’s obvious that Social Media is important, yet most companies don’t even know where to start.
This post is meant to provide a powerful tool to help you accomplish the first, and most basic, step to creating a successful Social Media presence.
Before jumping into the Social Media world and trying build fans and obtain followers, you must listen and understand what people are saying about you. Many brands spend huge amounts of resources every month on tools, programs, and employees in order to monitor what’s being said about them on the web.
Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to build your own, customizable (and free) listening tool that is comparable with some of the most powerful paid services. This tool, if used consistently, will help you keep a pulse on what’s being said about your brand or company on the web. (Click on any images to enlarge.)
1) Set Up A Friendfeed account. This Friendfeed account will act as an aggregator for all of the following feeds and accounts that you will be setting up in the following steps.
- Go to the Friendfeed website
- Click “sign up” unless you already have an account. Then just sign in using the Username/Password fields.
- Click on “Settings”
- Check the “Private feed” box
- Click “Save changes”
- Click “Settings” again
- Click “Import a service”
- Click on “Custom RSS/Atom” under the “Miscellaneous” category
- Add your feed URL’s in the specified field, and click “Display entries as messages” and click “Import Custom RSS/Atom.”
2) Set Up Google Alerts
- Go to the Google Alerts Page
- Enter the search terms you’d like to track (one word, or a phrase).
- Select “Everything” in the “Type:” menu.
- Select “Feed” in the “Deliver To:” dropdown menu.
- Click “Create Alert”
- Copy and paste RSS Feed URL into your Friendfeed account.
- Repeat for any/all other search terms you’d like to track.
3) Set up alerts on Social Mention
- Visit Social Mention
- Enter the search terms you’d like to track.
- Let Social Mention search… it may take a while, so be patient.
- Click on the RSS Feed icon
- Copy and paste RSS Feed URL into your Friendfeed account.
4) Set up alerts on Keotag
- Follow the same steps listed above for Social Mention
5) Add your Friendfeed RSS Feed to your preferred RSS Feed reader, or just log into Friendfeed on a regular basis.
Use this tool consistently for a few minutes every day to monitor the pulse of your company brand. It will help you recognize what you’re doing well, what needs work, and even help you put out internet fires before they get out of hand.
Listening to the buzz surrounding your brand is just the first of many things you can do to build a strong Social Media presence. Future posts will cover other steps, tactics, tools, and principles that build upon the foundation of listening. Until then, go get started!
If there are any other free services that you would add to this list to make this monitoring tool more powerful or robust, please leave them in the comments below!
Tags: FriendFeed > Google Alerts > Listening Device > Social Media > Social Media Basics > Social Mention
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July 7th, 2010 @ 11:02 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Matt Laurenceau. Matt Laurenceau said: RT @MindshareVoice: How to build the ultimate Free Social Media listening tool – http://ow.ly/28oAu [Blogged] [...]