Chris Brogan helps us listen

Thanks to Chris Brogan for writing a post titled “Grow Bigger Ears in 10 Minutes“. In the post, Chris talks about quick and simple ways to begin the process of brand monitoring without the need for fee based solutions like Radian6, Techrigy or BuzzGain.  Free online tools, starting with Google as a source are readily available, yet many individuals and organizations have yet to take advantage.

According to Chris, setting up a free listening station can be done in a few simple steps. Here’s his quick step by step to start that kind of station off.

Grow Bigger Ears in 10 Minutes

1. Get a gmail account. – http://www.gmail.com
2. Log in to Google Reader. This will become your home base for listening. Note the position of the “Add Subscriptions” button (mid top left) – http://www.google.com/reader
3. Now, go to Google Blogsearch. Type in your query about your company, your organization, your competitors, and the like. We’ll use the results in the next step. – http://blogsearch.google.com.
4. Note the “Subscribe” links on the bottom left of the page. Right-click the RSS link, and select copy.
5. Go back to Google Reader, click Add Subscription, and select paste.
6. Repeat this for as many variations of searches you want for blogs.
7. Go to Technorati. Perform the same queries there. Neither Google nor Technorati finds it all, so cross-posting works. – http://www.technorati.com
8. Go to Twitter Search. Do the same. – http://search.twitter.com
9. Fine tune your searches by seeing what inaccurate results come from your first attempts, and replace bad searches with better ones.
10. Take the payload of all that raw searching and SORT it using Google Reader. By this, I mean the following: when you find something to note, either Share it (Shift S), or email it to a core team ( type E on the keyboard). Send only the important stuff. Then, let internal employees see the RSS feed of the shared items, or just use the email feature. Whichever works best. This is how you sort the larger pile of info into the smaller and more useful packets that your organization can consume.
11. Most important to the process – DO something with what you’re learning. Figure out the business value of the listening you’re doing, and route it to the right places. Listening isn’t for marketers. It’s for the organization. It’s for customer service, for product management, for the senior team, etc.

Thanks for the guide Chris!

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6 Responses to “Chris Brogan helps us listen”

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1. Amber Naslund says:

   January 29, 2009 at 11:48 am

   Hi Corby,

   Great post by Chris with sound, practical advice. We’re definitely in favor of companies using these kinds of free tools to get started with listening; it’s taking that step that’s important, whatever the mechanism, and easy is good. Like Chris pointed out in his post, we’re a great build-on option for companies who have begun the listening process, started learning and absorbing, and need the “what now” of monitoring: analysis, workflow, engagemennt, and measurement for those conversations.

   Thanks for passing along Chris’ post, and continuing the discussion about how important monitoring and listening is for businesses today, whether or not they’re participating in social media themselves.

   Cheers,
   Amber Naslund
   Director of Community | Radian6
   @AmberCadabra
2. Corby says:

   January 29, 2009 at 12:08 pm

   Having tried Radian6 I must say that I truly like the service. It is clean from an interface perspective, it is easy to use, the data sets are rich and the pricing is not that expensive. My main concern with the entire concept of brand monitoring is how to use the results and findings. Companies that subscribe to services like yours must be willing to take action on the findings including participating in online discussions, rebutting misconceptions in the market, etc. Thanks for the comment.
3. Connie Bensen says:

   January 29, 2009 at 1:15 pm

   And I’m going to say thanks also for reiterating Chris’ post. At Techrigy we provide a solid set of analytics around the the listening aspect.

   It’s great for companies to explore listening with free tools, but I agree with you Corby in regard to what companies do with the results? Our tool offers many ways to review the information & act on it across various departments ranging from marketing, product dev’t, SEO, to PR.

   Connie
   Community Strategist
   http://sm2.techrigy.com
4. Chris Brogan... says:

   January 30, 2009 at 3:08 am

   And as the non-vendor commenting on the post (teehee), I found you using the exact methods listed above. : )
5. Corby Fine says:

   January 30, 2009 at 11:49 am

   Exactly Chris, I find that using these simple and free tactics, tied in with tools like BackType and FriendFeed allows me to monitor myself and in the end drive more traffic to my blog.

   Thanks for all the education, you are one of the best online social media strategists out there!
6. David Suydam says:

   February 1, 2009 at 10:29 am

   Great summary Corby (and Chris), although this is a somewhat brute-force method that can swamp you pretty quickly depending on where your interests lie. Assuming you don’t have an army of folks to sift through this stuff for you (I’m kidding, kindof), I’ve found it possible to use a couple techniques to be a little more exact.

   Here are a couple useful methods I use, both courtesy of Marshall Kirkpatrick:

   http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_build_a_social_media_cheat_sheet.php

   http://marshallk.com/three-useful-research-tactics-i-learned-last-week