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Make Sense of Social Media
for Your Business

Confused about where social media fits in your marketing plan? This book explains it in clear and practical language and includes tips and tools you can put into practice immediately.

 I just purchased your book on recommondation [sic] from a FB friend...I can't wait to devour it!
Stephen Dusty Roberts

Social Media Times

Learn how to use social media for local marketing in the latest issue (PDF)

Reputation Monitoring

Wondering whether all your efforts at social networking are working? Find out who's talking about you online with one of these tools.

  • Quick Checks

    Get a read on who's talking about you on the Web.
    • Check Usernames
      Check the availability of your brand or username on 160 popular social networking and social bookmarking websites (free/premium). Remember, sign up for the ones important to your target audience.
    • Topsy
      Search the social Web in real-time (free). Also includes Google+ search index.

  • Blogs

  • Twitter

    These sites are useful for seeing how you're doing on Twitter. Of course the data is open to interpretation and may have little relation to how much impact Twitter has on your marketing.
    • Klout
      Monitors Tweets to see who the key influencers are by topic.
    • TweetScan
      See if you're being mentioned on Twitter. Set up email alerts too.
    • Tweet Volume
      (Down as of 3/5/12) Uses Twitter and Google data to create a handy chart showing counts for words and phrases as they appear on Twitter. Also useful if you’re a marketer and want to share with your clients.
    • Twinfluence
      Measures influence of Twitterers and their followers, combined “with a few social network statistics thrown in as bonus.” Simply type in your twitter account name and password, and voila, get information about velocity, social capital and more.
    • Twitter Grader
      Simply type in your Twitter user name and you’ll get rank and grade.
    • Twitter Search
      Twitter search engine.

  • Conversations and Buzz

    • AddThis
      Track how often your information is shared.
    • BoardTracker
      Tracks discussion forums.
    • eCairn
      Automates tracking and participation. Starting at $99/month.
    • Google Alerts
      Google will track keywords you've selected. Information is sometimes dated. Set your preferences to avoid email overload.
    • Google Trends
      Tracks keywords over time and terms from social networks.
    • Google Insights
      Narrow your keyword search by location, category or seasonal factor.
    • Keotag
      Search for keyword tags across 14 different sites that aggregate content.
    • Lithium
      Automates tracking and research. Seems like you need to call to get pricing, which makes me think it's expensive.
    • Post Rank
      Track your RSS feeds.
    • Radian6
      Integrates WebTrends and Salesforce data. Its sophistication means more expensive, starting at $600/month (10/16/10)
    • Samepoint
      "See what people are talking about" with this social media search engine.
    • Social Mention
      One of the coolest freebies I've found so far. They find specific mentions, but also try to make sense of the data by providing analytics.
    • Trackur
      A comprehensive monitoring tool, starting at a low price for one word. To make it truly valuable, you could end up spending a lot more.
    • Xinu
      Check PageRank, Backlinks, Indexed Pages, Rankings and more.

  • Dashboards

    Bring lots of data into one place making it easier to track many sites at one look.
    • Hootsuite
      Offers a social media dashboard to track all types of social sites.
    • Netvibes
      Create your own dashboard by pulling in RSS feeds from all your favorite sites.