Social Media Monitoring Starter Pack for Small Businesses

Thinking about starting social media monitoring for your small business?

Don’t know where to start? Follow these steps and we’ll have you sorted in a jiffy.

Success Steps

Step 1.

Decide on a few terms you want to set up searches for.

I would suggest: Your company name, industry term/s, product name/s, (competitors names). Don’t choose too many, just choose a few say 5-8.

Step 2.

Go to your Google account (I am presuming you have one, if not go set one up) then go to Google Reader (it may be under the ‘more’ tab).

Step 3.

Open up a new tab and find Google Alerts as you did for Google Reader (or type alerts into the search bar, it should come up as the first result).

Type your first search term into the box. If the term is multiple words use quotation marks like this “Think Genial Widget Co.”

Then choose your settings. I use: Type: Everything, How Often: Once a day, Volume: Only the best results, Deliver to: Feed. Make sure Delivery is set to Feed not email. Create Alert.

Repeat this with all of your search terms then close Google Alerts.

Success Steps Pt ii

Step 4.

Open up a new tab and type search.twitter.com into your search bar.

Don’t mess around clicking on the trending topics (unless Think Genial or #tgtips is trending )

Type your first search term in, using quotation marks if you need them as described above and click search. Some results should appear (If not you may want to change the search term).

Right click on the link for the feed in the top right and click copy link address.

Go to Google Reader, left click on Add a Subscription (top left) then paste the link you just saved into the box and click add.

Repeat this for all your search terms.

Step 5.

You should now have a list of feeds for your search terms in your Google Reader subscriptions. If you like you can create folders to organise the feeds. For example you might want to create 2 folders, 1 for your company, 1 for info on your competitors

To do this go to manage subscriptions at the bottom and organise them there.

Step 5 a). (optional)

If you feel confident processing more information on a daily basis set up feeds for Google Blogs, Google News and Youtube. By doing this you will capture information over and above what you are gathering already.

However, you don’t want to get overwhelmed at this stage so this is optional.

Step 6.

Check Google Reader every day.

Step 7.

After say 2 weeks review which feeds are baring fruit and which aren’t , you may wish to try a few new search terms.

Step 8.

Ready to expand your listening activities? Keep an eye out for part 2

 

Are you already monitoring social media for your business?

Please let me know in the comments of any tools you find useful for social media listening.

 

Take care,

Joe

Credit @chrisbrogan and @julien (Smith)