WSI Simply Social

Many companies asks the question on what should be their first step when planning their first “Social Media Marketing” initiative.  Start a blog?  Create a YouTube video?  Create a Hubpage?  Even though these might sound as good starting points, they are not.

The first step for any business stepping into the social media marketing world is to understand what is being said about them, their brand or key executives found in their business.  Before the engagement with customers, they need to understand how their customers are feeling about their brand.  Who is the most influential?  Where are the discussions already happing?  Where do they already have a presence?

An effective monitoring system in place allows a company to be proactive. They can respond to complaints in a couple of minutes after the complaint has been posted.  Actively monitoring Social Media inside your company can strongly increase your reputation and enhance your credibility to helping customers. By reacting quickly to criticism you are more likely to convert complaints into product sales.

Conversations are happening online in all kinds of places. It’s important to understand how to get in there, and how to listen where the conversations are happening.

Find below a list of 10 monitoring tools for Social Media

1. HowSociable? – A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metrics
2. Technorati – Technorati is one of the best options for tracking social media sites. Custom RSS feeds lets you get quick updates on any blog that utters your company name.
3. del.icio.us – More people are sharing their bookmarks online. RSS feeds make it easy to track whenever someone bookmarks a web page that includes mention of your company.
4. Twitter – Twitter is entering “mainstream” and it’s vital for businesses to pay attention to what is being said about them on the micro-blogging service.
5. Yahoo Pipes – With Yahoo Pipes you can quickly set up your own RSS tracking, complete with filters. Want to track Twitter for mentions of your company? It is possible with Yahoo Pipes.
6. Google Video – Google recently switched focus to index videos from many online hosting sites (such as YouTube and MetaCafe). Now you can keep track of videos that include your company.
7. Google Alerts – It lets you track web, blogs, news and groups for any phrase you want. (Free).
8. Trackur – Trackur monitors all major search engines, not just Google (Starting at $18/mo)
9. Brandwatch – This tool combines alerts combined with data analysis. (Free weekly alert and paid plans)
10. BuzzMonitor – It is an open-source social media aggregator that you host on your own web server. Software downloads are free. Developed by The World Bank.