8 Tools for Listening to Social Buzz

Searching and listening is an important part of keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry.  But there is so much more to listening and searching than just search engines.  The phrase Social Search is being tossed around as a buzzword since search engines aren’t always capturing what is being said about you, your company, or your industry within the social media sites.  Here are some of my favorite ways to listen online.

1. Google Alerts – www.google.com/alerts.  Set this up for key words in your industry to see what is being posted on blogs and websites.  Put phrases in quotes to get an exact match.  If you are an author, you can also have a Google Alert for the title of your book. For your business, make sure you have your company name and your personal name (unless it’s a common name like Joe Smith) in a Google Alert so you know what is being posted about you on the web.
2. Blog Searches – http://blogsearch.google.com or www.technorati.com or http://alltop.com/.  Find the blogs that are out there in your industry – see how they are laid out and what they post about.  Subscribe to them with an RSS feed to get the updates.
3. Twitter Search – www.search.twitter.com then click on the Advanced Search to get specific keywords and regions.  You don’t have to have a twitter account to find out what people are talking about.
4. Facebook Search – http://www.facebook.com/search Facebook does not have a very robust search – sometimes you will search the exact page name and will not find it.  A lot of times blogs will have a Facebook button so you can easily get to their Page.  Use Facebook Instant:  http://www.fbinstant.net/ as another way to search on Facebook.
5. YouTube Search – YouTube has amazing searches based on keywords.  If you do use YouTube, make sure you put a lot of keywords into your videos so you come up in the searches also.
6. LinkedIn Search – Use the Advanced Search to see what people are doing in LinkedIn in Groups, Answers and Updates.  Use it to find ideas for a new blog post or to see what people are talking about.
7. Social Mention – http://socialmention.com/ This is a realtime social search tool that searches across several platforms at once.
8. Topsy – http://topsy.com/ Another social search tool that will find slightly different things than Social Mention.  Use a variety of tools to search in different ways.

Don’t be overwhelmed by all the different tools that are out there.  Pick a few to use consistently and the use the other tools to do more extensive research.  By taking the time to listen consistently you will be the go-to person for your industry and keep in contact with the buzz (either positive or negative) about your business and brand.

This week’s guest post is by Andrea Vahl. Andrea is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and also blogs as Grandma Mary, Social Media Edutainer.  Find out more at www.AndreaVahl.com.