Twitter for Dummies - Laura Fitton [65]
You can find plenty of tools available that let you track your social media presence. These tools allow you to set it and forget it — you can still find out what’s said without actively trawling through Twitter. Many of these tools are free, though you can pay for some tools that come with additional business features like analytics and better organization of search results.
In the following sections, we really only skim the surface of what’s possible. But no matter which service you use, make listening a priority for yourself on Twitter. Keeping an ear to the tremendous firehose of information about consumer sentiment and even world events helps and can definitely bear fruit and make effective use of your social media engagement time invested.
Gmail as keymaster
If you don’t already have a Gmail address, you really should. Gmail is emerging as a very convenient key to your social media identity, and having a Gmail account is your pass to many valuable, free Google applications and services like Google Alerts. Gmail is free, and as an e-mail service has some of the best spam-blocking, tagging, and message search going.
Your Gmail address is also the key to your Google profile URL, which means that PistachioConsulting@Gmail.com reserves this Google profile for the company: www.google.com/profiles/PistachioConsulting.
Remember, you don’t have to use your Gmail address as your main e-mail to benefit from having a Gmail account. But you may find more and more uses for it once you test the waters and do a few things with it.
Google Alerts
Setting up some basic Google Alerts, while not a Twitter-specific listening tool, is something every individual and company should do as a minimum social media listening program. The Google Alerts tool trawls the Web, looking for new blog posts, Twitter tweets, and news stories that mention whatever keywords you want to follow, then delivers those posts, tweets, and stories to your Gmail inbox (as shown in Figure 9-18).
To set up a Google Alert:
1. Log into your Gmail account.
2. In the top toolbar, click More.
A drop-down menu appears.
3. Select Even More from the menu.
The More Google Products screen appears.
4. Click the Alerts link, which has a bell to its left.
The Google Alerts screen appears.
5. In the Search Terms field, enter the topic, keyword, name, business name, or phrase that you want to monitor.
Doing a Boolean search, such as putting quotes around two words to keep them together, can help you fine-tune your Google Alert results.
6. From the Type drop-down list, select what kind of search you want to do.
We recommend Comprehensive at first, to cover all your possible search bases. If you find it is simply returning too many results for your brand, name, or keywords, you can always scale it back later.
7. From the How Often drop-down list, select how often you want Google to trawl for results.
8. In the Deliver To field, enter your Gmail address.
Google delivers the Alerts to this address.
9. Click the Create Alert button to activate the Google Alert.
10. Repeat Steps 5 through 9 for additional Alerts.
You can create as many Alert searches as you need.
BLVDStatus
BLVDStatus (www.blvd.status.com) is a new tool that works to help you track who is talking about you on the Internet (see Figure 9-19). It helps you pay attention to people who are using your name, your company name, a brand name, or any keywords you choose. This kind of monitoring and listening tool is a valuable way to keep track of how you, your company, or your product is perceived.
Figure 9-18: You can have Google Alerts delivered directly to your Gmail inbox.
Figure 9-19: The BLVDStatus Stats page.
What does BLVDStatus have to do with Twitter? It’s one of the few listening tools out there that lets you incorporate tweets as well as conversations about you found other places on the Web, such as blogs, into something called conversion tracking. Conversion tracking