SEMINAR: The top tools for listening to the online conversation

There is a conversation happening online. Actually, there are a lot of them, and they’re happening all over the place. They might be on Facebook, Twitter, on blogs, message boards and forums, or photo or video sharing sites. Whether or not your brand wants to actively participate in social media, at the very least you need to be listening to the conversation, wherever it may be.

Here are a handful of tools and sites you can use to keep an eye, or rather an ear, on what is being said online. (By the way, they’re all free!)

Google Alerts >> http://www.google.com/alerts

Google Alerts are emails you can have automatically sent to you whenever there are new Google results for a specific search term. You can set the alerts to scan news sources, the web, blogs, video, groups, or some all of the above, and schedule how often you want to receive them.

Yahoo! Alerts also offers a similar service.

Technorati >> http://technorati.com

Technorati is the leading search engine for blogs, indexing millions of blogs and pieces of tagged social media. By searching for relevant terms, a brand can connect with the influential bloggers and consumers who are creating and participating in the online conversation. The site also rates the “authority” of a blog by analyzing the number of other blogs that link back to the original post. The service also provides charts and graphs and other analytical tools to keep tabs on trending topics.

Twitter Search >> http://search.twitter.com/

Twitter Search simple enables you to see the “tweets” or individuals posts on Twitter about a given search term. It also identifies the top ten trending topics being discussed on Twitter.

TweetBeep >> http://tweetbeep.com/

TweetBeep is a lot like Google Alerts, except specific to Twitter, with notifications that can be sent to your email hourly or daily. TweetBeep takes it a step further by allowing you to limit the notifications to tweets from individuals within a certain geographical area. It can also separate positive and negative tweets and identify if a tweet is asking a question.

TweetDeck >> http://tweetdeck.com/beta

TweetDeck has become the most popular Twitter desktop application because of its simplicity in organizing and managing different types of tweets into specific columns. You can set up as many columns as you want, each dedicated to showing the real-time tweets for specific search terms or hashtags. It is also helpful for managing multiple Twitter accounts simultaneously if you have both a personal account and a branded corporate account.

Twazzup >> http://www.twazzup.com

Twazzup is essentially a web-based Twitter Search on steroids. Not only does it show the real-time tweets for specific search terms, but it enables you to identify the top trendmakers or users tweeting about that topic. As a brand, this is powerful for identifying and reaching out to the most influential and active participants in a conversation.

WhosTalkin >> http://www.whostalkin.com/

This powerful search engine scans 60 of the Internet’s most popular social media platforms, including some platforms not addressed by some of the other tools such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, news sites, and others. A simple search can help a brand identify which platforms are seeing the most conversation, and then connect with individuals.

Facebook Lexicon >> http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/

Facebook has been a bit more protective of its content, but is starting to open things up a bit more. Currently in BETA mode, Facebook Lexicon is a powerful tool that populates charts and graphs showing how frequently select search terms appear in profile, group, or event wall conversations. Queries can be run to reveal demographics talking about specific terms, volume by geographic location, associated terms, and other information to help you get a better picture of who is talking about you on Facebook.

There are also a number of paid high-end solutions that can dig deep into the conversations and reveal patterns and other data useful in building a robust social media strategy. Of course the ones listed here are by no means an exhaustive list for all the tools available that make listening possible and easy.

What other tools have you come across that have helped you listen to the online conversation?