Whether you are doing an ego search, want to keep up with the hottest topics or find out what folks are saying about you or your competitors, you need tools to do it. 

The following are primarily geared for the home based business up to mid-size.  For larger entities, there are other tools/sites that will meet your needs that allow for some budget (read that fee based

These are in no particular order, so don’t think that number 1 is the best or 15 the worst.  In fact, let me know which ones you use and also which other good ones I have left out (and I know there are some out there, but this is a start)

Addictomatic – Allows you to see what people are saying about you, your brand or others by going through Twitter, FriendFeed, Bing, Google, Digg, Delicious Technorati, Delicious and others.  What is really cool is they offer a widget that you can move around your browser with. 

Bloglines – Bloglines is a FREE online service for subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install — simply register as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing your account any time, from any computer or mobile device.

Bloglines makes your life simple. Choose the kind of content you want to receive in an RSS fees.  Is it news within your niche, checking out the competition or as many people suspect, is it all about you?  Here’s what Read Write/Web said about them: “The Web-based Bloglines loads quickly, sports a sophisticated interface, and delivers such snappy responses…”

Buzoo – Buzzoo is all about internet buzz. It that tracks several visible sites to find for stories that are hot right now.

Blogpulse – If you want to see what is hot in your niche within the blogosphere, Blogpulse might be for you.  They monitor trends, buzz, and stats to let you know who is being talked about and who has the capability of influence.

Board Tracker – While there are a lot of tools for the major social networking sites, Board Tracker monitors forums and message tracking.  No small feat as there are over 37,000 forums to sort through.  If you are looking to become an authority, this one is worth checking out, see who the players are and get in the mix.

Friendfeed Search – Similar to a Twitter search, but more helpful as it actually shows you how/what terms are available and how to use them.  It is a little better than Twitter in my opion since it will also retrieve videos and photos besides the normal content that users post.

Google Alerts – The quintessential free brand/reputation monitoring service available.  It gives you the option of either an RSS feed or will send it to you via email, this is a easy to use tool that has become the standard by which the others are judged.  That being said, there are some things that you may opt to use other sites to do (the message boards indicate folks aren’t happy with the now taken away option of looking for things on the web).  Still it is the best of class for the money.  Did I say it was free??

How Sociable – How Sociable provides a simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web. It provides a quick way for people to compare the visibility of one brand to another as to how your brand shows up on social networks. It tells you where you are scoring well and not and as such is a good tool to know where you should be considering to put more of your focus.  I would make it a habit to come by at regular intervals to see your (and your competitors) progress.

Icerocket- Icerocket is a search engine that is akin to a trending type list, but brings it to you with the capabilities of breaking it out in many categories (Twitter, blogs, movies, videos, etc)  So in some sense, it tells you what is topical (which is usually also traffic generating) that may not be on your mind at any given moment.

Keotag – This helpful tool is both a search engine for blog tags as well as a generator (which can be a handy thing to have around when you are doing your next blog post)  As a search engine it will search tags in such places as Google, Technorati, Digg, Twitter and others.  Kind of one stop shopping as it brings all of the results back to you on one page for your review.  From there, check out the sites you are interested in and it is off to the blogospere.

Scount Labs – Web-based application that tracks social media and finds signals in the noise to help your team build better products and stronger customer relationships.  They employ a simple, user-friendly interface that delivers very powerful information to social marketers that can help them track the performance of their brands. Since it is fee driven, not for the small or WAHM types, but I can see value here if you are serious about what you are doing.

Social Mention – We have posted about Social Mention previously and indicated it is an excellent real-time search engine, that pulls in data from a range of social media. As well as displaying the latest results, it also gives you a sentiment score of positive, negative, related keywords, reach and many other useful metrics. If you’re quick off the mark with your social media monitoring, this could be a valuable way to avert a crisis before it spreads.

Surchur – Surchur is a great source for the latest and the greatest on topics that are in the now. For example, want to learn the latest about your favorite pop star. Type their name into Surchur and you’ll be amazed at all of the nitty gritty you’ll find.

It may not be so good for keeping up with your brand or your competitors unless they are really trending or established.  On the other side, it can give you topics you can generate blog content around that will push traffic to your site.

TweetDeck – Yes, I know it is an awesome Twitter client you can use to manager your Tweets, but the keyword search means you can see what people are saying about you.

 WP-Stats-Dashboard – This WordPress Plug in displays your blog’s stats graph plus your blog traffic, social engagement and social influence directly in your dashboard. See how you’re ranking on Alexa, check out your Technorati authority, monitor your ranking across multiple sites and much more. Once you install this plugin you’ll wonder how you ever managed to track your social media worth without it.

Believe it or not, not doing social media right can actually harm your business.

If you are looking for free tips or advice on how to approach your social media, go to Social Media Dudes

Or follow our tweets on Twitter at twitter.com/johnpanico

Finally, those are my thoughts from high atop my 2nd floor office above my garage. What I want to hear are YOUR comments.  Please leave one now.

If you are looking for free tips or advice on how to approach your social media, go to Social Media Dudesand subscribe to your newsletter in the upper left hand corner! Still not convinced that social media is right for your business? Read this and get our F.R.E.E. report on the 7 Myths of Social Media! Or follow our tweets on Twitter at twitter.com/johnpanico Finally, those are my thoughts from high atop my 2nd floor office above my garage. What I want to hear are YOUR comments. Please leave one now.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

9 Responses to “15 Sites To Monitor Your Brand and Internet Presence!”