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30

Five Tools I Use for Listening

June 15, 2008

dog ears As part of the social media strategy series, I thought I’d start with listening.

Social media tools are a great way to get the word out about your passions, your interests, the company’s latest products, but we tend to rush right into the “speaking” side of the toolbox without giving much thought to the “listening” part. Knowing what people are saying about you, your competitors, and your industry as a whole are just as important as blogging and making good video.

It’s interesting to note that companies will spend anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 on a good website design, but will fail to implement even the most rudimentary listening tools to move their capabilities to understand the impact of such a site beyond the realm of hits and clicks.

As part of our social media strategy, let’s presume that all businesses will need a way of listening to their audience, their customers, their partners, and their detractors. Let’s start with the tools, and we will talk about the strategy for dealing with what we hear in a subsequent post. By the way, the guts and tech behind most every one of these tools is RSS. Click that link to watch a quick YouTube video by Common Craft, if you want a refresher on what RSS is/does.

Five Tools I Use for Listening

  • Google Reader - I use Google Reader as my home base for collecting and reading all the various sources of information I collect. It’s web-based, fast, and easy to use. It allows me to blaze through content without thinking much about it. Use Google Reader by adding various searches to it (described in the next few bullets).
  • Technorati - Go to Technorati, put your company ( product, brand, personal) name into the search bar, and see what people are saying about you. Note the little orange RSS subscription button in the upper right. Copy that link location (Right click the link and say “Copy Link” or however your browser words that). Now, dump that into Google Reader as one of your listening searches. Repeat this for your competitor’s name, brand, individuals, and some industry terms (if you can make them succinct).
  • Google Blogsearch - Go to Google Blogsearch and do the same thing. Sure there will be some overlap, but it’s important to capture both. The subscription to searches link is on the left hand side about 1/3 down the page.
  • Summize - If you’re thinking about using social networks and social media, it’s likely that some of your customers are using Twitter. If so, go to Summize and put in your search terms there, too. Cook as many searches as you need, grabbing the RSS feeds and throwing them into Google Reader. Build a strong catalog of searches, and then remove bad or ineffective ones after you trial them out a bit.
  • Link Checker - Here’s an off-the-beaten path one. Go to SEO Pro and use their free link checker. (Note: it’s a bit slow to crawl for technical reasons, so don’t get worried if it takes a while to respond to your query). This tool checks who’s linking to your URLs, what the link text is (what’s in blue on the web page that people might click to get to you), and all kinds of stats that matter to search engine optimization experts, but might not matter to you. Why? Because it’s important to know what people are saying about you with their linking efforts.
  • BONUS ROUND: Crazy Egg - If you want to see how people are looking at your website when they’re NOT commenting and talking about you, try out Crazy Egg. The tool is chock full of visualization data, including heat maps, that show you how people are interacting with your website. Sometimes, people aren’t saying something on your blog posts because they’re being distracted by something else. Here’s your chance to figure that out.

The Pro Stuff

If you want something a little more advanced than hacking search tools and sucking the RSS feeds into readers (which isn’t that bad, you know), you might try tools like Radian6 (note: I just completed a 3 part webinar series with them that we’re airing soon. Go to Twebinar.com for details) or BuzzLogic or a series of other tools in the same category (they’re all listening, so I’m sure they can swarm here and give links in the comments section).

There are values to the professional products, and if you’re a larger company and can afford the not-too-very-expensive splurge, you get a lot more dashboarding and reporting with such tools. But if you’re bootstrapping, stick with me, kids.

How are You Listening?

I’m curious to know who’s doing what in the world of listening. Are you doing something formal with your organization? Have you tried any of these tools for this purpose? What else might we be missing in our tool set?

Photo credit, tanakawho

Article
blogging, listening, rss, socialmedia, socialmedia100, Strategy, tools

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Comments
Comment by Mack Collier on June 15, 2008 @ 4:03 pm

“As part of the social media strategy series, I thought I’d start with listening.”

Which is where any company wanting to launch a social media strategy should start as well. Great stuff as always, Chris, I hope companies curious about social media realize the resource you are giving them here.

Comment by Jeroen de Miranda on June 15, 2008 @ 4:04 pm

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the tips, will use them
- especially the Technorati and Summize RSS tip - add them to my Google reader…. makes scanning referencing to my blog so much easier!

Comment by Rick Wolff on June 15, 2008 @ 4:13 pm

That’s funny. I went to my BlogLines account and saw I had about 7000 unread items in it. I just unsubscribed to everything. I wonder if I’ll miss any of it.

Pingback by » Extendable ears on June 15, 2008 @ 4:13 pm

[…] Brogan just wrote a great post on listening using technology. Think of it as the Web 2.0 version of the Fred and George Weasly’s […]

Comment by Rick Wolff on June 15, 2008 @ 4:14 pm

Not as a result of reading this post, you understand. Coincidentally, earlier today.

Comment by Dave Fleet on June 15, 2008 @ 4:17 pm

If you don’t have the budget for pro tools like Radian6 or BuzzLogic, you’re spot-on with the ones you’ve listed here.

I recently used a series of searches in BlogPulse, Technorati and Google Blogsearch, all plugged into Google Reader, to monitor coverage of a major event.

I’d add another tool to the list to help you focus your attention on the posts you need to pay more attention to - AideRSS. It’s easy to use, and they provide fantastic support if you run into trouble.

Comment by Connie Bensen on June 15, 2008 @ 4:19 pm

I’m not sure if you consider paying attention to what people are searching for & what’s hitting your blog as ‘listening’, but I lump them in because it’s a part of the big picture.

For those I would add Feedburner & Google Analytics to your list.

And one that definitely fits on your list is Joseph Kingsley’s Social Media Firehose (using Yahoo pipes). It brings in different results than gAlerts & delivery is in rss, email, netvibes or whatever your pleasure is.

Comment by Emily Williams on June 15, 2008 @ 4:46 pm

This deserves a comment if only for the great picture! In all seriousness though, this is a great post - as someone just starting in social media, I’m finding posts like this to be a godsend. And the fact that I was already using some of these tools gives me confirmation that I’m heading in the right direction! Thanks, Chris.

Comment by E Stewart on June 15, 2008 @ 6:29 pm

When I first read this, I thought that exploring listening as a first step in an SN strategy was sort of putting the cart before the horse, by making the assumption that your company or organization is already “out there,” using a blog or other SN tool. Then I went to Technorati to test it out. I did a search for the museum that I work for, and while I did get back a lot of extraneous material, I found two websites referring to my museum that I did not know about. (I had an uh-oh moment, but both were positive.) Moral of the story: we’re out there even when we assume we’re not. I’ll be paying better attention from now on.

Comment by Ken Burgin on June 15, 2008 @ 7:31 pm

Plus of course Google Alerts for instant notification of when me or my company is mentioned online!

Comment by Nathan Gilliatt on June 15, 2008 @ 8:13 pm

There’s a lot of variety between the free tools and the high-end options you’ve listed under The Pro Stuff. In the course of collecting information on about 60 vendors, I’ve found commercial tools starting under $10/month, though of course capabilities go up with price. Some of the commercial suppliers also offer free versions, which I recently listed:

http://net-savvy.com/executive/tools/monitoring-social-media-before-you-have-a-bud.html

Pingback by Five Tools Chris Brogan Uses for Listening and 8 Ways We Get the Most From Listening Tools - Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Thinking, writing, business ideas . . . You’re only a stranger once. on June 15, 2008 @ 9:08 pm

[…] I’m so with him. You can find the five tools Chris uses most for listening here. […]

Comment by Beth Kanter on June 15, 2008 @ 9:43 pm

Chris:

Happy Father’s Day!

Anything with a dog picture catches my attention! I’ve been using this doggy portrait for listening
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonhurd/98812799/

What an awesome post! Thanks for sharing.

Here’s a case study from the Red Cross about how they use an institutional approach to listening .. AND how they measure the ROI on it.

http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/03/social-media-ro.html

Also, I’ve been trying to pull together listening exercises for workshop curriculum for nonprofits. I’m going to add your excellent article to the resource list - but here’s a few step-by-step projects

http://socialmedia-listening.wikispaces.com/

Pingback by Vulcan Link Dump at marketing in traffic by brian branca on June 15, 2008 @ 11:54 pm

[…] Brogan - Five Tools I Use for Listening - Great tips with helpful explanations for getting yourself plugged […]

Comment by Johan Bryggare on June 16, 2008 @ 1:46 am

I’ve put up searches (and feeds) in Twingly and Friendfeed as well.

Trackback by nerdd.net | news and opinion on June 16, 2008 @ 5:44 am

Five Tools I Use for Listening | nerdd.net…

\r\nChris Brogan on social media sites he uses to monitor what folks are saying about him/his sites/…

Pingback by 140 Characters of Fun at The US spreadshirt blog on June 16, 2008 @ 10:49 am

[…] listening as a way of talking about what people are saying about you or your site or your shop.  Check out the post here for some other great […]

Pingback by The Importance Of Being Immersed… In Social Media | Southern Fields Web Service on June 16, 2008 @ 1:09 pm

[…] Chris Brogan’s piece concerning listening tools for social media. Or don’t, and just sling spam into a world you don’t really […]

Comment by John on June 16, 2008 @ 3:33 pm

Chris: Super resource list.
Beth: http://www.grameen.com/agrameen/index.html - have you seen this piece by Professor Muhammad Yunus? We are putting some attention to the idea of building Social Businesses in the Web2.0. There is some fragmentation in CMS but we have decided to standardize on Bitrix (http://www.bitrixsoft.com) because of the support and access to social networking utilities.

Comment by Jay Ramirez on June 17, 2008 @ 8:05 am

Thank you for the tools Chris. It’s always interesting to see how people use tools to keep up on the information flow.

What reader do you use for feeds requiring a login like del.icio.us?

Take care

Comment by Brad White on June 17, 2008 @ 11:49 pm

Thanks for the awesome post and blog! I have really enjoyed your blog since I found it via lifehacker a few months ago.
Brad

Pingback by Austoon Daily » Five Tools I Use for Listening on June 22, 2008 @ 3:39 pm

[…] Five Tools I Use for Listening […]

Pingback by PR Connections » If speaking hurt on June 26, 2008 @ 11:45 am

[…] update] See also Chris Brogan’s post Five Tools I Use for Listening (OK, it’s meant to promote Radian 6 and their twebinar, but still, useful information). […]

Pingback by What are Some Social Media Marketing Best Practices | chrisbrogan.com on August 27, 2008 @ 9:23 pm

[…] how to listen. Simple, I know. But it’s a best practice. Here are five tools I use for listening, and here’s my take on listening to […]

Comment by Will Kriski on August 27, 2008 @ 11:09 pm

When listening to customers, I prefer a direct approach - asking! That means web surveys (I use iPerceptions and survey 10% or so of the visitors if they want to). I provide comments to blog entries, youtube videos, etc. Many people will ask me for what they want to see, or comment on what they liked/disliked.

Pingback by   Business,Uncategorized | Cherp is a Twitter-Flavored Agency  — Recycle Email on August 28, 2008 @ 11:51 am

[…] how to listen. Simple, I know. But it’s a best practice. Here are five tools I use for listening, and here’s my take on listening to […]

Comment by Ricardo Bueno on August 30, 2008 @ 5:05 am

How about Google Alerts? I use google alerts set up for my name, my blog’s name and a few others to see who’s saying “what” at any given time. I’ve caught a few spam sites using my content and I’ve found when others are linking back without necessarily using the trackback feature. Anyway, it’s a good way to track when your name, your brand, is being talking about…

Comment by J.P. on August 30, 2008 @ 4:06 pm

Hey! Link Checker is now a very cool addition to my toolbox :-)

Thanks Chris!

Comment by Bob Potter on September 3, 2008 @ 12:11 am

I just made an offer to my customers to track their name, product/service, or industry using these and a few other bootstrapping tools. It is an experiment of sorts to see what I can come up with for them and to see how we can use the findings to connect with their customers. I’ll let you know the results and the tools I use when I have some data in hand.

Pingback by How to track your brand on the social web on September 22, 2008 @ 8:32 am

[…] Chris Brogan suggests “Five Tools I Use for Listening” […]

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  • December 31, 1969 at 4:33 pm Louis Gray
    Google Blog Search, Google News Alerts, Summize, Technorati, Referral Logs...
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    Google Alerts, Summize, Technorati are my main ones..
  • December 31, 1969 at 4:33 pm Eric Thompson
    If I was in my company's PR dept. I'd be following your advice. Good article Chris.

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