Social Media Monitoring: Free Tools to Manage Your Online Presence

We’ve posted on the importance of listening as well as some of the ways you can use social media for engaging with your customers, including Twitter, blogs, and Linkedin.  But it can be a real challenge to monitor what is being said about your business or industry online.  There are plenty of social media monitoring tools and services you can purchase, but these may be out of reach for many small to mid-sized businesses.  The good news is that there are several free and helpful tools you can use to begin to monitor and measure your online presence:

Google Alerts are easy and critical monitoring tools.  Set up alerts for keywords and topics you want to monitor, and Google will email you updates with the latest relevant Google results.

TweetBeep is a similar service to Google Alerts, but with a Twitter focus.  TweetBeep will send you updates of Twitter conversations on selected topics and keywords.

Social Mention is a real-time search engine that includes a wide range of social media sites.  In addition to search results, Social Mention also provides some basic metrics for reputation management, and you can set up email updates.

Keotag is a simple and awesome tool for searching tags across seventeen platforms, including the major search engines, Digg, Reddit, and more.

TweetLevel is a nifty and simple tool that measures your Twitter influence, popularity, engagement, and trust.

HowSociable provides a useful snapshot of your brand visibility.

Twitter Search is a basic tool for checking out real-time Twitter conversations. If you’re already using a Twitter client or application (highly recommended!) like TweetDeck, Seesmic, or HootSuite, make sure to set up searches that will automatically refresh and keep you updated on conversations.

Are there free tools that you would recommend?

Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, strategist, and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY.  Follow her on Twitter here.

Compared to Twitter and Facebook, blogs can feel a bit old-fashioned. Blogs take a lot of time and energy to maintain, and many small businesses find them to be a challenge. But blogs are powerful – and creative – marketing tools. They demonstrate your expertise, show off your company’s personality, and increase your visibility online. Blogs can also generate content for your other social media channels. Above all else, a blog can demonstrate that you care about your business, your industry, and your customers.

What Have You Got to Say?

I’ve found that many small businesses share the same blogging challenge: they don’t know what to blog about! Here are some ideas for posts:

1. Report industry news. Share information, commentary and insider knowledge on news that impacts your industry or products. This is a great way to build value for your customers and establish your expertise.
2. Share advice and tips. Provide guidance and help to your customers and readers. Everyone loves a post full of tips. (Like this one!)
3. Product announcements and case studies. Are you rolling out a new product or service? Blog about it! And don’t forget to share success stories.
4. Roundups. Create a regular roundup of useful or relevant links to share on your blog. It’s a great way to make use of other resources online – and to make your own web surfing productive!
5. Guest bloggers. Invite other bloggers or subject matter specialists to submit posts. This is a great way to bring resources to your customers. Your guest bloggers might just invite you to do some guest blogging, too. (You’re reading a guest blog right now!)

Tips for Better Posts

Once you’ve got your content, make the most of it! Here are some things to keep in mind while you’re writing:

1. Make it concise. You should definitely use more than 140 characters, but keep your posts brief (300-500 words is a good range).
2. Develop clear, clever titles. This is especially important if you will be posting your blog content to Twitter and Facebook! Make your titles clear, so that prospective readers know what they’ll be reading, but see if you can make them snappy, too.
3. Include links. Provide links to people, articles, and blogs that you reference. This is useful to your readers, and it also helps you to build connections in the blogosphere.
4. Proofread your posts! Even in the online world, spelling, grammar, and punctuation matter. Don’t forget to proof your posts.

My 500 words are nearly up… happy blogging!

Tammy Oler is a freelance wordslinger, strategist, and member of the Design Rangers Auxiliary in Brooklyn, NY. Follow her on Twitter here.