Social Media Monitoring Tools

This week I have a social media audit project due in my Social Media for Public Relations course. We were provided with a list of ideas and tool we could use for this assignment. Here are some really great tool you could use if you wanted to monitor a company/brand/person/event etc.

First of all Google Reader is an essential social bookmarking tool. It is a place were you can send all the information from all your monitoring tools through RSS feeds and keep it organized and compressed.  I use Google reader on a day to day basis.

Back to the presented topic. Here are some great tools I used for my project:

Google Alerts:
Google Alerts tracks the Web for Sites, Blogs, News, Microblogs, videos, and Images.
For this project, I created a Google Alert for any of the above having to do with iPad, iPod, iPhone, iTouch, iTunes, Mac, MacBook, and/or Steve Jobs.

The Alerts will be sent directly to my Google Reader as-they-happen.


Twitter Advanced Search:
Twitter Advanced Search gives the option to find tweets based on words, phrases, hashtags, people, places and attitudes.

Here's what my results feed looks like:

You can also RSS Feed these results, which of course I did. I highly recommend you do as well. This search also provides 'in real time' results like Google Alerts.


IceRocket:
IceRocket searches the Web for sites, blogs, news and more for your key words of choice. Here are my results:

IceRocket provides you with the option of viewing results from today, the past week, month or you can choose dates yourself. It has RSS feed capability as well as the others.

There are many more site like: Social Mention, BoardTracker, Delicious, Yahoo Pipes, etc.

You can also monitor the subject of your choice on Facebook and Myspace.

The point of all this monitoring is basically to research and see what other people are saying and reporting on your topic. It is a very helpful research tool, essential for social media savvy university students like me!

Myspace: Reaching an End or a New Beginning?

I don't talk a lot about Myspace. I haven't held an account with Myspace since spring 2008. When I graduated high school in May 2007, I was reaching an end and starting a new beginning. Myspace seemed like a high school trend. I wanted new friends, a new network and a fresh start. Facebook soon after become the new social media must have. I deleted my Myspace account, along with my photos and my friends and created a Facebook account. I started a new life at a university, made new friends and took new photos. Facebook seemed like a more mature, organized, and user friendly way to network on the internet. Unfortunately for Myspace, this was the case for many users. Either users made a clean break like I did or slowly became less and less obsessed.

Today, I have very few friends who utilize Myspace. It seems to be a dying trend. so how is Myspace dealing with the retention of  users? Are they going to turn things around?

As Myspace's president steps out, Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones step up:

As Hirschhorn (pictured, right) describes it, MySpace’s trajectory moving forward is about the “pillars of broadcasting, discovery, self-expression, and making content a part of all those experiences.” He spoke to quality, usability and engineering as major focal points: “We want as many people here to be people who build, and who create, and who have top-notch engineering talent.”

-Mashable.com

Myspace is looking to go back to it's roots and figure out at what point strayed from it's goal. They believe it's not only about the content or only about the social networking, it's about both. It's about pop culture. it's about what's new, what's hot and what's not. it wants to be the center of pop culture news, music, etc. 

So what about Facebook?

At Myspace, they don't see it as a "winner take all" scenario. They believe there is amply room for more than one dominating social networking site online. Think of Myspace as a phone service, like AT&T. There are many phone service networks in existence, more than a few dominate and thrive. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are just a few. People choose different services for different reasons. Myspace and Facebook are just two of those services. People will choose them for different reasons. They all co-exist and are successful.

Myspace plans on making user profile's more structured (like facebook) but still give them the freedom to customize their ow look. They will also add some new tools. Users will be able to follow stats on how many people view their profile, listen to their streams, watches their videos, etc. Users will also be able to earn badges. Further, Myspace will keep track of hot trends overall, the most popular music, videos, and topics. Like Facebook, Myspace will be able to recommend friends, music, etc. to users. Apps and games will also undergo future changes. According to Mashable.com:

Currently in testing now is a change to the former status update tool into an explicit publishing tool, allowing users to simply add videos, photos, links, and other types of content. Within the next month we should expect to see a new feature that allows cross-posting to sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg via a simple dropdown. “Why not? Publish once, go everywhere. If you increase publishing, you increase engagement,” said Hirschhorn of the upcoming feature.

Users should have to wait too much longer before see all these new changes. Myspace is taking swift action in improving the user experience.

I  commend Myspace for staying strong. Although I dont plan on becoming a user of Myspace in the future, I recognize the changes they are making and the effort they are putting behind the site. I can see a possible comeback in the distant future. First you make changes, and then you have to pull your users back in. 

so demise or survival for Myspace?

Survival

Podcasting: Tips & Tricks

Now that I have posted my first podcast I ever worked on, I want to share some personal tips on podcasting. 

My first personal Tip #1: I f you have the option to use either Audacity or Garage Band, use Garage Band. Garage Band was much more well behaved than Audacity. It was more user friendly and it was more fun to use. 

Personal Tip #2: When you are recording your podcast material, make sure there is no background noise. Background noise is annoying and an extra burden on you later. Take the time to find a quite place to work. It is well worth the payoff to do it right the first time. Editing can be very time consuming for us rookies. 

Personal Tip #3: Get close enough to the microphone that the recording is of good quality. At the same time, don't get too close! Getting too close to the microphone can create a muffled sound. You also don't want to make your listeners ears bleed. 

Personal Tip #4: Save, Save, Save. Save your files everywhere. Back up your files. Re-doing editing that has already been done can be extremely frustrating...I know. Be aware of when you need to save. 

Personal Tip #5: Add music and sound effects. It makes your podcast much more interesting and engaging to listeners. It's hard to hold someone's attention for an extended amount of time, which brings me to my next tip. 

Personal Tip #6: Be precise. Don't beat around the bush and run off on tangents. Stick to the subject. It's hard to hold someone's attention without a visual aid, don't bore and confuse them. 

Personal Tip #7: Make sure people can hear you. Make sure you post your podcast somewhere people can get to it. Post it to your website or blog. Post a link on your Twitter, facebook, and Myspace. was a pain! If you get to choose between the two, pick

Podcasting is an exciting activity. It is a great feeling to have the freedom to podcast about whatever you want to. It is a liberating feeling that gives you the gift of creativity and a voice. My experience was both interesting and frustrating. I had fun playing with the equipment and learning to do new things. The down side to podcasting is, for sure, the editing. It can be tedious and time consuming. On the other hand, It is sun adding in your own sound effects and music to your podcast. I encourage anyone interested in social media to at least learn how to podcast and try it once. You never know how much you may learn and how much you may enjoy it. I would do it again.

Citizen Marketers: Fanatics

 

While reading Citizen Marketers, I came across a section titled "Fanatics". Fanatics are citizen marketers who filter work, analyze the daily or weekly progress of a brand, product, organization, or person and prescribe courses of action. They basically critic brands etc. but also praise them when praise is deserved. These citizen marketers are just "fanatics" who blog etc. as a hobby. In the book, McChronicals.com is used as an example. McChronicals is essentially just a blog about McDonalds. I went to the website to explore further. I wanted a hands on, visual example of what a "fanatic" actually is. Upon my venturing the McChronical's site, I learned a lot of new things about McDonalds that I would otherwise not know. For example: Did you know that McDonalds charges you 5 cents extra every time you purchase a water bottle from their establishment? It is a deposit free. Interesting. Why not just buy a cup of water instead? It costs less (nothing) and keeps you from throwing away a plastic bottle. Yes, at McDonalds there is no other option then just throwing away your bottle. They do not provide customers with recycle bins! I also learned that the McDonalds in Iceland recently shut down due to soaring costs. They also have their own Monopoly game board. Yes, that's right! McDonalds Monopoly. You can also follow McDonalds on twitter! You know you want to. It goes on and on. It includes restaurant reviews, customer comments, and how-tos. It was really impressive. This blogger really goes above and beyond. I can only imagine he is a real McDonalds Fanatic (that can't be healthy). I find his cause very noble. I can see how blogs like this can really sway consumers opinions and open their eyes to the inner workings of a company. I think I will continue to read this blog, even though I don't eat at McDonalds ( I don't eat fried food). I find it very interesting. Citizen Marketers really do make a difference.  

A Virtual Map

This morning I decided to track my virtual journey and map my tracks. In other words, I decided to keep track of where one page took me to another and another and so forth. I wanted to explore how and why one page took my to another and beyond. So here it is: This morning I checked my Facebook, just like I do every morning. I browsed around at other users updates and came upon an update by "365 things to do in Austin", a page which updates each day to provide users with an activity they could do that day. When I came upon the update, I decided to go to their page to see what else they had suggested. The page got me thinking, "I really need to come up with some activities to do with my little (Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Austin)". So I went ahead and checked out the previous notes that had been posted on the page. One of the posts had to do with Capital Area Food Bank. I didn't really know much about Capital Area, but I heard of it before, so I clicked it to find out more. I ended up interested in the work done by Capital Area and therefore ended up at their organization's official web site. The web site inspired me and I signed up to volunteer next month! I went from checking my Facebook one minute to volunteering the next. The internet has endless paths for people to venture onto. You never know where you might end up! Other paths I took off of this Facebook page were to the Austin Children's Museum's official web page. I found out that the Museum is free on Sundays from 4pm-5pm! That's something great I can do with my little. I thought it was interesting that I ended up planning day trips left and right with my little for the next couple months.  An innocent visit to Facebook to check if I had any friend requests or event invitations (which I did as well) landed me a volunteer opportunity and a trip to Austin Children's Museum. The internet gives us this great freedom of knowledge to explore and endless resources.  

Google Buzz

 

Google just announced Google Buzz on Tuesday; its newest push toward the social media movement!

Google Buzz is a feature of Gmail, so users must be a member of Gmail to be able to have access to Google Buzz. Google Buzz enables users to share statuses, updates, images and videos via Gmail. The Google Buzz features will not only be accessible via your home computer or laptop, but it will also be available on Android iPhone to provide users with "live" updates. Google hopes that Google Buzz will soon become the new Facebook, which is the new-ish Myspace. Some features include: The 40 people users chat with the most via Gmail & Gchat (instant messaging for Gmail users) will be automatically added as friends on Google Buzz. These individual's updates will show up automatically (like Twitter)as a live feed on one's Google buzz. When creating your own status updates, you can choose to make them private or public each individual time.One can also tag people in their status updates (like Twitter). Google Buzz gives people the option to like or dislike (unlike Facebook) statuses and filter out status updates that become frivolousand obnoxious. Google Buzz also recommends new friends to follow (like Facebook). Photos from Flickr and Picasa and videos from YouTube appear as thumbnails in one's Google Buzz. When you click them, they pull up (full size) on your browser. Users can also pull in tweets, from Twitter, (but not Facebook updates) into Google Buzz. Unfortunately, you can't export your Google Buzz updates out to Twitter. based phones as well as the

I personally wouldn't call this" innovative". It just seems like a new Facebook or Myspace, only exclusively for Gmail users. Some news Google, we already have a Facebook and it's available to everyone! We'll see where this goes. It could be a flop in the younger demographic, but a possible winner for business professionals. There are not enough users involved in Google Buzz yet to really foresee what will happen.

Facebook: social or professional?

Should Facebook effect your professional life?

  

I have been told many times that I should monitor my photos, my information, and even my friends because potential employers might come across my page. I have also been told that employers often judge potential employees by the photos, information, and friends that person may have on their Facebook page.

Is this justified?

Most people use this social tool for their social life. I keep in touch with friends and family, share photos, and stories. I can see how my page may give employers the wrong idea. It is full of my personal photos, and friends. I do have friends on Facebook that have questionable photos and content. Their content is not my own and I will not base who my friends are and are not on their Facebook content

Why should I be judged based on who my friends are? Why should I be judged on the "events" that I partake in? And finally, why should I be judged on what I like and dislike? (by a potential employers) 

What I do on my personal time has nothing to do with what I do on the clock. Have you heard,"keep your personal life at home?" That's what Facebook is, It's my personal life, so no one should involve it with the office. I personally don't have anything too inappropriate on my Facebook. But if for example, someone claims their political or religious party on their Facebook and this effects the decision of a potential employer, they may never know that was the very reason for their unemployment. Sure there are laws that say you can't discriminate for this or that reason. An employer can simply say there were others more qualified than you.

True or False?  

I have not experienced this discrimination, or as far as I am concerned I have not. This is a concern of mine though. I hate the feeling that I have to monitor every move I make on Facebook. I believe that Facebook should be used as a social tool only and not a professional one.