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Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter make it easy
for people to come together and share opinions, experiences and
thoughts on a number of topics. Smart companies understand this
and are using the power of social media to connect and inform
their customers, and potential customers. Referred to as „Social
Media Marketing“, it’s a smart way to open the lines of
communication between you and your prospects.

Social media activities run the gamut from Blogging, micro
blogging sites such as Twitter, social networking communities
such as LinkedIn and Facebook, video and music uploading sites,
discussion forums, photo sharing and more. With so many
different sites and ways to participate, it can be difficult to
keep track of all your efforts.

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Participating in social media doesn’t take a lot of money, but
it is very time consuming and businesses want to know that all
of this investment in time is paying off. Before launching a
campaign, you should have a firm grasp on what it is you’re
trying to accomplish. Is it increasing website traffic? Getting
more ezine subscribers? Having more people download your free
ebook or whitepaper? Or maybe you just want to work on your
company’s brand image. Whatever it is, you need to have a plan.
As the old saying goes, „If you don’t know where you’re going,
you’ll never get there“. Have your game plan intact before
getting started in marketing yourself, or your company with
social media.

There are many different forms of social media, so it’s
impossible to use them all. Pick three or four, and funnel the
majority of your efforts there. Even if you won’t be working
them all, at the very least you should claim your name or
company name on as many social services as possible. You don’t
want to find out later that someone has the user name that you
want. If you need to see if your chosen user name is available
try Namechk.com
which checks dozens of social media networking and bookmarking sites all
at once to see if it’s available. Claim your name now so you won’t end up
being sorry later.

So how do you monitor all the buzz? How do you monitor your
brand and protect your hard earned reputation? There isn’t one fool-proof method but there are many
services and tools out there that will make it easy to see who’s
talking about you online. Some are free and others will make you
pull out your wallet.

These „online reputation management“ tools, as they’re often
referred to, will help you to define keywords or phrases you
wish to track and then watch for any mention of your company
name, products, or services. It’s important to defend and monitor
your online reputation. Similar to High School reputations,
protecting your image online is the name of the game, and just
as in real life, everybody has one to maintain.

Let’s take a look at some of the measuring and tracking tools at
your disposal:

1) BackTweets.com : A search engine for Twitter. See
who’s tweeting your links and more. Can also sign up for email
alerts of new findings.

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2) Addictomatic.com : A little different than the others,
you type in a keyword, topic or phrase and out it goes searching
the top blogs, news sites, Google, Technorati, Ask, YouTube,
Flickr, Digg, Topix and more. You’ll be given a personalized
results page to bookmark with everything it finds related to
your topic.

3) Buzzoo.net : All about Internet buzz, it tracks
several different websites to bring you what’s „hot“ right now.

4) Surchur.com : Search for the latest and greatest on
topics that are popular right now. Type in a keyphrase and it
searches blogs, social news sites, photo and video sites for
your chosen topic.

5) Commentful.Blogflux.com : This service watches for
comments on blog posts, Digg, Flickr, and others and notifies
you of any findings.

6) AlertRank.com : A better way to organize and sort
Google alerts. Get a daily report emailed to you in a
spreadsheet format of what it finds.

7) BoardTracker.com : A search engine just for forums.
Monitor discussion boards and be notified by email when a thread
matching your search terms is discovered. Free to use.

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Google.com/alerts : I’ve been using this „secret
weapon“ for years. Simply type in your name or company name and
receive daily emails of results found. They do the work, you
receive the links. Free and nice.

9) BrandsEye.com : An online reputation management tool
with a real-time, concise overview of your online reputation.
Multiple levels of services and pricing available. Starting at
$1.00.

10) Twazzup.com : Another Twitter search engine.

11) SiteMention.com : Type in your url and find out
what’s being said about you. The results returned are gathered
from Google Blog Search, Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube, MySpace,
Digg, Delicious and many more.

12) Brandwatch.net : This service tracks your brands,
companies, even the competition. Sign up for free weekly updates
on any brand. Their detailed reports break down what sites like
you, your most talked about features, weekly summary of all
blogs and forum activity. Very similar to the old „press
clipping“ service.

13) Trackur.com : A tool that scans many websites,
including blogs, news, image and video sites, forums and
notifies you of any mention of your brand, products/services.
Easy to use and affordable. Prices vary depending on need, a
personal account is just $18.00 a month, corporate account
$88.00 a month with other options also available. Try a
„personal“ account free for 14 days.

14) FiltrBox.com : This one searches online news sources,
Twitter and others to find out what’s being said about you or
your company. Pricing is based on the number of users, but there
is a free version that provides „5 filters“ and 15 days of what
they call „article history“.

15) SocialMention.com/alerts : Just like Google Alerts
but for social media. Enter your keyword phrase and email address
to be notified of any new findings. Searches blogs, microblogs
like Twitter, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, videos
and more.

16) BlogPulse.com : A search engine that searches just
for data posted to blogs. Enter your keyword, hit submit and
off it goes to gather results.

17) BackType.com : Billing itself as a „conversational
search engine“ they index millions of conversations from social
networks, blogs and other social media.

About The Author
„Blah…Blah…Blog..Rantings by Merle“- The Blog that’s loaded with online
marketing techniques and strategies that will help you improve your website
traffic and make more money online. Tips and tricks for online entrepreneurs,
and marketers to grow your net biz. Visit today –
www.mcpromotions.blogspot.com.
Follow me Twitter.com/msmerle

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