Each quarter Snoo.ws tackles a new series topic to provide our audience with insight, intelligence, examples and ideas. This month is Monitoring Month where we will cover everything from basic monitoring 101 to the top monitoring tools to monitoring’s role in your overall strategy. So, stay tuned – there’s plenty to come.
There are a number of free and low-cost monitoring platforms that are easy to use and can offer results quickly, readily, and with minimal time spent signing up for accounts or learning how they work. These types of tools have some limitations. Not all of them will work on a variety of Internet platform types, some are Twitter-specific, some focus mostly on blogs. They may not be able to cache and store data or offer comparative searches the way some of the bigger, pay platforms may require.
But sometimes you just need a place to start, or some basic listening to help you get an idea of the Internet conversations that mention your brand. These tools can offer a great place to start, and used in conjunction with each other can offer a more complete understanding of your brand’s mentions.
Here is a small list of those free and low-cost tools to help you get started. Using these, you can begin some DIY Monitoring to see what online conversations are saying about you:
Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/
- free
- result types: news, blogs, video, discussions, books
- results delivered to email or into Google Reader feed
- user can set the alert to pull at a desired frequency, daily, weekly, or as events that meet the parameters are discovered
Monittor
http://monitter.com/
- free
- pulls searches from Twitter
- can narrow down geographic location
- real time
Technorati
http://technocrati.com
- free
- largest blog monitoring service
- seems more like a blog that talks about what’s going on with other blogs, rather than a service.
- has a search bar function, so you could just go to the site everyday, put your terms in their search bar and then give it a whirl to see what pops up.
- it’s a VERY simplistic form of monitoring
Trackur
http://www.trackur.com/
- listen to customers, monitor reputation, simplify social media monitoring
- four different plans at various price points: $18, $88, $197, & $377 a month
- most expensive plan boasts customizable dashboard
- boasts 40,000+ users
- founded by Andy Beal
- boasts “amazing ROI”
- there is also a “trackur free” account, you only get one saved search though
Twazzap
http://www.twazzup.com/
- free
- very simple platform
- searches Twitter
Wildfire
http://www.wildfireapp.com
- offers a wide range of tools
- offers a wide range of pricing packages:http://www.wildfireapp.com/plans
- bases a lot of its monitoring on comparing what’s going on with your competitors and their FB/twitter accounts
- offers custom packages
- daily tracking, alerts, customer support
Visible Technologies
http://www.visibletechnologies.com/
- offers a free trial
- provides: monitoring, customer engagement, sentiment analysis, topic discovery, alerts and notifications
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