5 Free Brand Monitoring Solutions

Observation into the current conversation is something I recommend to all companies before they go out there and try to get some of the online activities to work in their favour. Social Media is a two way conversation, so to put that more simply, you have to listen to what people are saying, before you can respond.

You can’t just speak and hope it solves all problems without knowing what you are speaking about or who you are speaking too. Therefore, I’ve came up with this short but feature-full list of sites you can use to observe the conversation around your brand.

Site: Technorati
What is it?: Technorati started by monitoring and indexing all the known blogs on the internet. They since moved into photos and video
Brand Monitoring: A simple search on technorati will find out exactly what has been said about you or by you in the blog-o-sphere. Features include a quick-view so that you can view a general look on both posts, videos and images, as well as the fact you can go into each vertical for more detailed information.

Site: Google Blog Search
What is it?: Google Blog Search is very similar to Technorati in that it tries to monitor everything being said by blogs. In the about page Google make it clear this is not just for Blogger blogs, Google owns the blogging platform known as Blogger.
Brand Monitoring: Once again you can use this to see who has been saying what about you in blogs online. What I like about Google blog search is that you can sort by most recent and most relevant to see what has been said lately but what has had the strongest mention of your brand. You can also search for specific dates so if you rolled out a new product or service anytime you can check specific reaction around your brand on those dates.

Site: Niche News Sites
What is it?: Niche news sites, such as Oil Online for the Oil industry, can be great sources of information. If you are a significant brand in a specific niche then it’s worth checking these out.
Brand Monitoring: There’s no better way to get an overview of your brand than in a news site specific to your niche. This allows you to see how your company is viewed by these media sources and allows you to compare yourself to their opinions of your competitors.

Site: Search Engines
What is it?: Search Engines, in basic form try to index as much useful content from the web as possible and return the best results for users’ search queries.
Brand Monitoring: It’s possible that you’ve found a lot of stories or issues that you would like to cover up, but how do you know where to start? I would go with the issues and feedback found on the top results of search engines for your company name and company / product / service reviews.

Site: Competition / Competitors
What is it?: Your online competitiors. Whoever is a known competitor, companies that offer similar services or products.
Brand Monitoring: Search for your competitors and find other places they are being mentioned online and see if you have been mentioned. The services above can vary in accuracy from their certain sources but certain online communities where your rivals are mentioned may also uncover discussion about you.

In Conclusion
Just incase the images distracted you from the real content, here’s the solutions again:

• Technorati
• Google Blog Search
• Niche News Sites
• Search Engines
• Competitors

There are more that I could cover and certainly will in the future, it’s possibly an opportunity for somebody to use to go into more detail to build some off-topic links, but I think Marketing Pilgrim did that pretty well.

source: http://www.pluginhq.com/5-free-brand-monitoring-solutions/

Social Media Monitoring - Why Monitor After All?

By Shadab Malik

Social Media Monitoring is for brand strategizers, brand gurus and brand managers, who believe in taking an organized approach towards brand building. However, social media monitoring is not just limited to businesses, bloggers find them useful too. In fact, social media monitoring in the 21st century is essential to almost anyone - a business owner, a student, a customer, a housewife, a sportsman, a journalist, an intellectual, a fool - anyone. Here are some insights about the same:

Social Media Monitoring for Businesses: Obviously as a Business Owner or a responsible Brand Manager for a business (irrespective of big or small), you definitely would love to hear what people are talking about your company, your business, your brand. For the same reason, community portals like Trip Advisor and MouthShut.com got popular in the first place. Now unlike earlier days (around a few years back) when there were only a couple of such portals where people got together and shouted, today, there are thousands of places where people are voicing their opinions. And sometimes you may not even have the slightest idea of a growing protestation in a community or group for your products / services. For instance, say some of your customers are located in Saimata (a city in Japan) where your product is being talked about on a local blog / regional community forum. Obviously you are not expecting a dream about it. You need to find it for yourself.

Secondly, Social Media Monitoring is not just for Online Business, it is as important for an Offline Business too, only because your customers have gone online. They find internet the easiest way to review your product and a place where their voice is heard by many. So an offline business would not want to be completely unaware of what is cooking against them or for them online.

Essentially, Social Media Monitoring is now an integral part if businesses really want to safeguard their integrity.

Education: Monitoring education societies, organizations, education committees is a great way for students, researches alike. You are better equipped by what courses are on offer, what courses are in demand, what are the courses educational institutions or ministry are more inclined to develop. Further monitoring communities where people discuss or speak about details on a subject is another great way to benefit through Social Media Monitoring.

News: If you want to keep yourself updated with the latest happenings in any particular area, business, government issues or whatever, monitoring social media can only make work easier for you. Twitter is known to be the fastest news release source. Bloggers collect a lot of topics to write upon through this medium. Monitoring Social Media where news spread quicker than any other medium today would be the best source if you wish to be among the first few to popularize it.

Professional Development: As with education, social media can help you in an all round development of your professional personality. Monitoring social media groups where peers of your profession gather and speak and discuss things can help you in expanding your professional learning as well as networking circles.

Latest Buzz: Social Media Monitoring helps in keeping yourself informed upto the last minute. What is the latest buzz around your town? Which celebrity is making a presence tonight & where? Who is offering freebies and when? If you happen to love freaking out, you can be assured of being the first ones to get updated of the buzz.

Product Development: Businesses can strategize according to the buzz, trends being followed & things people look forward to. Social Media Monitoring can only help them combine their product / service with the ongoing buzz / trends to achieve a desired product.

Engagement: This is the most important and widely accepted aspect of Social Media Monitoring. Engaging yourself with what your customers say about you or your friends talk about you or your professional peers re-iterate, can help you gain access to a lot of freely available useful information as also having a personal chat with your customers. It is like understanding the needs and behavior more effectively.

Considering the scope of Social Media and the information that it has in store and which is freely available, monitoring it can only help you expedite your efforts to your goals. But what is actually needed is to Strategize and exploit this resource in the most efficient manner. This is what I shall take up in my next article.

Shadab Malik is a veteran SEO & an active Social Media Marketer . Currently exploring Social Media Monitoring Tools, he has been appreciated to successfully launch a no of SEO programmes for many websites. Shadab also offers consultancy on Travel. Radically from the Hospitality Industry, he has an expertise in Online Travel. You can follow Shadab Malik on Twitter

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shadab_Malik

Social Media Monitoring & Brand Monitor

By Shadab Malik

Just when you thought that it is becoming tougher each day as you gather more clients, some tools can really make life easier for you as a Brand Manager. Social Media has been a phenomenon lately, and of course, this is due to the unbeatable usefulness that comes with your engagement to Social Media. Social Media has further dissolved the boundaries of the Web 2.0 to a greater extent. Media platforms, like Twitter brings you closer to a Marketing Guru, a dream company or a Celebrity. You could directly put across your thoughts and no appointments are actually needed! This is one of the many uses of Twitter and similarly Twitter is one among many Social Media Platforms available on the internet today.

With millions of users engaged & connected through social media, marketers have been proactive in spotting the opportunities and exploiting the avenues that come with such a huge potential customer base. Now, it becomes easier for Marketers to actually showcase their products, extract opinions of customers and conduct research pretty easily and also with much lower costs. Further, the data happens to be very accurate in such cases. Now with this bat in hand, a marketer actually can enhance his endeavors to an unimaginable extent and reap out the benefits, if done properly.

An important consideration, however, is to manage your interaction with the masses and thereby ensuring that you are keeping up pace and are considerably in sync with the people that may be your actual & potential customers. As your marketing efforts grow, it becomes essential to have a means that could assist you to actually monitor your efforts, hear responses, check out discussions simultaneously, concerning you or your targeted market and then modify, mold or improvise your marketing efforts further by such first-hand information that you gain.

Surprisingly, our senses find it obvious that there MUST be a tool that is available to tackle such intricacies. And what do we do? Guessed right! Google.

Researching for the best Social Media Monitoring Tool could really again be a TASK rather than a step and as always, you have to be very careful in choosing the right tool, since too much depends on the results that this tool shall generate. In my next Article I shall offer you an Analysis on some of the best media monitoring tools available online. But for now, let me just finish off by saying that such tools offer an easy interface for Corporate, Bloggers, Social Media Marketers and Public Relations Officers to monitor their brand online and manage it accordingly.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shadab_Malik