When you start monitoring social conversations it takes a while to figure out which words and phrases return the most relevant content. There are many excellent subscription tools available, but until you have narrowed down your search terms and brand terms, it’s a smart idea to use a free tool.

iGoogle is one easy-to-create and easy-to-use dashboard.  Here’s how to do it:

1. If you don’t already have a Google account, set one up.
   If you have an account, sign in.
2. Once you’ve signed in to your Google account, click on the gear icon on the top right and select iGoogle.
3. If this is your first time using iGoogle, you’ll see the setup wizard called “Create your own homepage in under 30 seconds.”
4. Once you have the iGoogle page set up, you can being to create your dashboard.
5. Organize your dashboard into tabs for easier analysis – next to the Home tab there is a drop down menu.
6. Choose Add a tab and and name the tab according to the categories of content you plan to monitor.

Brand names, competitors, descriptive phrases about your products, and so on.

7.  Now add feeds of content to each tab.

8.  In a new browser window go to the web, news and social search engines and do a search for the brand names and phrases you have chosen to monitor.  You can use Yahoo News, IceRocket, Social Mention or Topsy. (If you use Icerocket  or Topsy remember to adjust the language you want to see.)

8. Find the RSS feed for each search. You may have to hunt around the page, but it will be there.

9.   Click that link and follow the instructions to add it to your Google Homepage

And voila!  Once you have added all the search feeds from news. blogs, twitter etc., you should have a dashboard that looks something like this

Monitor these feeds of conversations every day for two weeks.  Make a spreadsheet and keep track of conversations that are particularly relevant or the people who talk about you or your competitors often, very positively or negatively.

This simple dashboard will help you organize your listening efforts.  If you analyze the content it will also be a great tool for learning what people are saying about you and how you should respond.

Once you have narrowed down the conversations and the people you need to follow you can upgrade to a paid dashboard.  You can use the phrases and feeds you know to be relevant and use a smarter tool for long term monitoring and social intelligence gathering.

For more Digital PR and social media tips

Follow me on Twitter

Add me to your circles on Google Plus

Join us on Facebook

Read the full press release about the study

In their 2011 State of the Media report Pew Research highlights the fact that the media landscape is still in flux – consumers decide what news they want to get and how they want to get it.  Each new technological advance adds another layer of complexity.  In 2010 digital news media, like AOL and The Daily, hired almost as many people as were laid off from traditional newsrooms. And even those left in the traditional newsroom are now expected to provide images, audio and video with their stories.

Journalists’ jobs have changed dramatically.  Since a large part of PR is working with the media and pitching news stories to journalists, we need to keep up with these technological changes.

Early in the last decade forward thinking companies added an online newsroom to their website to help journalists find and cover their news content. Yet even back then (2001) we rated only a “D” from usability expert Jakob Nielsen. “Corporations spend millions on PR, and yet the press sections of their websites often fail to meet journalists’ most basic information needs.”

It seems that as fast as we try to catch up, technology is still ahead of us. The 2011 PwR Journalists Survey shows that

• 88% want images with a news release
• 35% want video with a release
• 31% asked for embed codes with visual material provided with a release

So back to the online newsrooms – do we still rate a “D”?  You be the judge.  Our recent study of Fortune 100 and INC 500 online newsrooms shows some glaring gaps:

Some sectors are doing a little better – for example the INC 5000 Food and Beverage category:

And while this is much better than the average INC 5000 company, it’s still a far cry from what journalists are looking for.

If you want to increase your media coverage, give the journalists what they need.

Isn’t it time your online newsroom measured up?  Go for an A this year.

Another finding from the Pew Generations Report that is of particular interest to PR people is that  more people over the age of 34 are  getting their news online.  And that goes all the way up to the over 74 year-olds now.

How they find the news and what they do with it has changed radically too, says this report.

“Information is now portable, personalized, and participatory; people access news on-the-go and discuss it online with friends and family.”

Where do they get their daily news?  The internet has surpassed newspapers and radio in popularity and now ranks just behind TV.

In the 18 – 45 age group the percentage that gets their news online is high, dropping off with the older generations.However, those over 45 are adopting online news at a faster rate each year.

The corporate online newsroom has to keep pace with these changes in  news reading and sharing.  To be effective we have to deliver our news in the right place and in the right format.

ClickThroughs #2 trend is that email and social will get more integrated.

“As email open rates continue to decline some marketers are left watching this powerful resource diminish, wondering how they can reignite this audience.”

Email firms like Constant Contact have certainly seen this trend and are jumping on it hard.  They have added many social components to their email service.

Here’s some of the research that shows that integrating email with social sharing drives results:

• Emails that provide users with sharing options on social media sites actually drive a significant increase in click-through rates – 30% higher than without social sharing options ( Source: GetResponse
• Marketers rate social media as the online marketing channel with the greatest positive effect when integrated with email. source: Lyris
• Facebook and Twitter were the most commonly used sites in integrated email-social campaigns
• Facebook integration produced the best results  eMarketer
• 21% of email marketers say social media integration is essential to drive opt-in rates when you are building a list

What you can do to socilize your email content:

• Use a tool like Flowtown that uncovers the social graph of the people on your email list
• Add share this buttons on every email
• Connect to the social network/s that most of your list members belong to
• Monitor the social conversation and engage
• Identify and reward your influencers and evangelists
• Test and track everything.  Use analytics to measure the effectiveness of your emails and your social engagement

Like the press release, email is not dead. social media doesnot kill these channels, it just beomces an amplifier for the message.

Follow me on Twitter

We know by now that we have to listen before we jump into social media. But the question I often get asked is how?  I just got an email from a friend today who is in NYC at a conference and she said “I am looking for concrete answers and all I get is platitudes!”

What to Listen For:

In order to listen well you have to decide what you are looking for.  Start with your company name, brand names, competitors and add generic terms that describe your business and/or your product

Example:  a skin care company should also listen for mentions of skin care, dry skin, aging, anti aging, wrinkle cream etc.  You can do some keyword research to see what phrases people are searching for, or look into your own analytics to see what words and phrases people search to find your website.

Free Tools

The most basic tool is RSS.  You can set up a dashboard using  something as simple as an iGoogle page.

You can see how to do this in this short video

Another tool you can use to make a great dashboard is NetVibes.  Here is a video on how to set it up.

And watch this video I made to show you how to do the searches

Do the searches in Google BlogSearch, Twitter, Yahoo News, and other social websites like Technorati, digg.com,  StumbleUpon and Delicious

Subscribe to the RSS Feed for these searches and pull the data into your RSS reader. Watch the video of how to do this

There are other free tools that can help you listen to conversations

Backtype

IceRocket

SocialMention

Paid Tools

There are many monitoring tools on the market now.  Each one has its own set of features and pricing structure

ViralHeat Read a review

BuzzLogic Insights
Radian 6
Buzzmetrics
Trackur
Visible Technologies
Cision

Techrigy (review from TechCrunch)

Sysomos Read the review by Dave Fleet

Jive Software They integrated Filtrbox into their Jive Market Engagement Solution.

Getting Value from Listening Tools

Smart social media gal Liz Strauss posted this article about how to get the most from listening tools. It’s a must-read for anyone involved in this activity

Follow me on Twitter

Image credit: K Y Olsen