Photo Credit:
Robert Scoble
As an Internet marketer, one of the biggest problems I face on a day to day basis is how to keep up with the scores of social media and content outlets on the web. It's easy to lose entire days to social media upkeep and tracking, which creates the need for automated measurement tools, like dashboards and other measurement tools. Monitoring social media and content that is published on the web is essential to any marketers job. You need to be able to respond quickly when others talk about you or your brand - a quick response can often mean the difference between a brand evangelist and a lifetime detractor. Here is my list of the top 19 social media dashboard tools, which includes 2 tools for aggregating and collecting this data.
Social Media Tools
- Twitter Search
There are some fantastic advanced search commands you can use with Twitter's search engine. From simple brand related searches to local phrases, Twitter Search can do it all.
- IceRocket
Good blog search engine.
- Technorati
Another good blog search engine.
- Blogpulse
Blog search from Nielsen.
- Google News
Track news stories and more.
- BoardTracker
Forum search engine, useful for tracking forum conversations.
- Facebook Lexicon
See how often people are mentioning you or your brand.
- Google Analytics
You may not think of Google Analytics when you think of social media, but you should be. With Google Analytics, you can track referrals to your website from the social media platforms you're using.
- Google Trends
See what's trending on the web.
- Delicious Search
See how many times pages from your site have been bookmarked by others.
- Digg Search
Much like Delicious, you can see how many times pages have been Dugg by others.
- Google Blog Search
Blog search engine from Google. (none of the blog search engines are perfect, so it's a good idea to get a mix of data and parse it yourself)
- TwitterCounter
Get a rough idea of your Twitter reach.
- User Name Check
See if your brand's username has been taken on major and minor social media networks.
- BackType
Monitor blog comments.
- Social Mention
Decent search aggregation for various sources, from blogs to social sites.
- Google Alerts
Set up alerts for keyword or brand name mentions across the web.
Collection Points
- Google Reader
What's great about the tools mentioned above is that almost all of them offer RSS feeds for your searches. If you're an agency, or just represent multiple clients, it's real easy to aggregate a bunch of searches for one client into unique folders.
- Netvibes
Netvibes actually allows you to set up a pretty nifty dashboard using a combination of RSS feeds and widgets. There's a great tutorial on how to do it
Any others you feel deserve a mention? Let me know with a comment!
