How to build your own brand monitoring platform for free
Originally published in Social Media Today
Following my previous post about how Google could develop a killer (and extremely low-cost) social media monitoring platform, I thought I'd share details on how you can go about creating one of your own. Think of this as a DIY tutorial for creating that brand monitoring platform you've been meaning to get up-and-running.
Granted, the 'platform' detailed below doesn't have all the bells and whistles you'd get from one of the paid services (i.e. sentiment analysis, demographic information, ability to create pretty charts and graphs), but then again, the out-of-pocket cost is just a few minutes of your time. Besides, having something like the below is a far cry from continuing to sit on the sidelines and being uninformed about what's being said about your brand. OK, let's get to it.
Google Reader
First things, first, sign-up for Google Reader if you haven't already done so. Then open it up and let's start populating it with your brand-related feeds. For the purposes of this tutorial, we're going to pretend the "brand" we're tracking is "social media". Obviously, if you're going to follow this tutorial, replace "social media" with "your brand or key term(s)".
News Feeds
We'll cover the big three here, which should suffice for just about any basic monitoring needs.
Google News: Go to news.google.com, enter your keyword(s) and click 'Search News'. On the left-hand column of the results page, click the 'Sorted by Date' link and then scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click the 'RSS' link to add the feed to your Google Reader.
Yahoo News: Go to news.yahoo.com, enter your keyword(s) and click 'News Search'. On the left-hand column of the results page, click the 'Yahoo! News' link, navigate to the top, middle of the results page and click on the 'time' link to sort the results by most recent. Then navigate to the bottom of the right-hand colum and click the 'RSS' link to add the feed to your Google Reader.
Bing News: Go to bing.com/news, enter your keyword(s) and click Enter. On the results page, navigate to the top right column and click on the 'Most Recent' link. From there, scroll down to the bottom left-hand column and click the 'RSS' link to add the feed to your Google Reader.
Blog Search
Just two should suffice here. In addition to Google Blog Search, I've included Icerocket, but you could just as easily replace or supplement that with Technorati or another service of your choice.
Google Blog Search: Enter your keyword(s), click the 'sort by date' link on the top right and then navigate to the left-hand column of the page to find the 'Subscribe' header and click on 'RSS'.
Icerocket: Go to Icerocket.com, enter your keyword(s) and click the 'search' button. On the results page, find the 'Published' section on the left-hand sidebar and select your desired timing. Then navigate down the left-hand sidebar to the 'Subscribe' section and click the 'Results RSS' link and add the feed to your Google Reader.
Twitter Feeds
Twitter offers a variety of search options, here are three basic ones that may make sense for keeping tabs on brand buzz.
Brand Search: Go to search.twitter.com, enter your keyword(s) and click 'search'. Find the 'Feed for this Query' link on the top right of the results page and add the RSS feed to your Google Reader.
Influencer Feed(s): Go to search.twitter.com and click on the 'advanced search' link. Enter your keyword(s) under the "Words" section and then enter the Twitter username (i.e. TrevR for me) in the 'From This Person' field under the 'People' section and click 'search'. Find the 'Feed for this Query' link on the top right of the results page and add the RSS feed to your Google Reader.
Detractor Feed(s): Same as 'Influencer Feeds' above, only replace the Twitter user name(s) with those who are brand detractors.
Social Mention Feeds
SocialMention is a free service that allows you to track a ton of social media channels for free. Here are the channels we'd suggest if you've already done the above--this will allow you to keep tabs on comments, images, videos, Q&A sites and more.
Bookmarks: Go to socialmention.com, enter your keyword(s) and click 'Search'. On the results page, click on the 'Bookmarks' link at the top of the page above the search box. Then, navigate to the top right-hand side of the page and click on the 'RSS Feed' link to add the feed to your Google Reader.
Comments: Same as above, only click on the 'Comments' link at the top of the page.
Images: Same as above, only click on the 'Images' link at the top of the page.
Video: Same as above, only click on the 'Video' link at the top of the page.
Audio: Same as above, only click on the 'Audio' link at the top of the page.
Q&A Sites: Same as above, only click on the 'Q&A' link at the top of the page.
Digg Feed(s)
One of the new features Digg recently rolled out was the ability to subscribe via RSS to search queries. This is a boon for an exercise such as this, here are your options:
Best Match: Enter your keyword(s) and click the 'best match' button to sort the results by the closest matching items. Find the 'subscribe to these results' link on the top right of the page and add the RSS feed to your Google Reader.
Most Dugg: Same as above, only click on the 'most dugg' button.
Newest First: Same as above, only click on the 'newest first' button.
There you have it, if you followed every one of the above steps you'd have a solid grasp on the dialogue about your brand at any given point in time. Obviously, if your brand has a decent online presence, your Google Reader will quickly become deluged with content as well. My advice is to start small, experiment and pick-and-choose which items you add based on your specific listening needs and go from there.