Learn to monitor the web for your brand, product or keyword mentions using nothing but free tools like Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Alerts. More info at http://bit.ly/optimareader

2. • Catch people talking
about your company or
products
• Find potential customers
• Find influencers or
partners for future
outreach
• Find blog ideas
• Find things to RT

3. • An RSS feed reader (we like
Google Reader)
• Twitter
• Google Alerts
• Google Blog Search

4. • Look for RSS icon on
industry sites
• Search for “INDUSTRY
blog”
• Search for “top
INDUSTRY blogs”
• Find competitors’ blogs

5. • Try adding /feed to blog’s URL:
http://blog.hhcolorlab.com/ 
http://blog.hhcolorlab.com/feed

6. In Google
Reader,
click
“Subscribe”
Paste RSS
feed URL
Click “Add”

8. • Click the arrow on
a feed and then
“New folder…”
• Organize by
audience
(customers,
competition) or by
source (Q&A sites,
blogs, video)

10. • Create RSS updates from Google
searches:
www.google.com/alerts
• Search for keywords, product names,
company names
• Real-time notification of new Google
search results
• Can also send automatic email as results
are found

12. • Tip: try alerts that will find people asking
questions

13. • Trial and error!
• Use “quotes,” or you’ll
get weird stuff 
• Try OR, AND
• Group terms with ( )
• Weed out junk with “-”
• Use “-
site:example.com” to
filter out spammy sites

14. • Cast a wider net: Pull tweets in too!
• Hear from consumers who don’t blog
• Look for…
• Tweets that suggest buyer intent
• Tweets from related businesses, targeting your
audience

15. • Twitter removed link to search RSS
• Direct link still works:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=YO
• Replace “YOURKEYWORDS” with target
terms
• Paste URL into Google
Reader

16. • Monitor tweets from or to any account
• Browser will replace spaces and special
characters, giving you this URL:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=fro

17. • Filter tweets by latitude/longitude:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=we
• Use this to find your latitude and
longitude:
http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html

18. • Use hashtags to pull relevant tweets:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%2
• In this example, replace “photog” with
your hashtag of choice
• Use the following for hashtag research:
• http://hashonomy.com/hashtags/trending/
• http://hashtags.org/
• http://twubs.com/

19. • Remove retweets with –rt
• Remove tweets w/ links with –filter:link
• Example:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=we
• Leaves you with actual conversations, not
just links to blogs
• Remove tweets with any keyword by
adding “–keyword”

20. • If not comfortable modifying URLs
directly, try http://topsy.com/
• Simpler, but missing some options

21. • Create an assortment of feeds w/ brands,
hashtags, and keywords
• Test something, then modify query
• Filter out spammy results
• Remove any feed that isn’t useful

22. • Subscribe to a page’s feed using this URL:
https://
www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=
id=57676989295
• Click profile image to see page ID in
URL:
• Put ID into above URL and paste it into
Google Reader

23. • No built-in method like Twitter – use
Google Alerts:
hhcolorlab site:facebook.com -site:facebook
• The above returns...
• Mentions of hhcolorlab on Facebook
• Not including their Facebook page
• Excluding all Twitter RTs posted to Facebook
walls
• Copy that text to Google Alerts to test

24. • Brainstorm ideas just for video!
• Set “Result type” to “Video.”
• Create a folder just for video searches

25. • Monitor Quora, Yahoo Answers, Wiki
Answers, others with a single search:
(site:quora.com OR site:answers.yahoo.com OR site
• Add queries to Google Alerts!

26. • Follow blogs in 1 location
• Comment on interesting posts
• Follow interesting people on Twitter
• Respond to brand mentions

27. • Create a bundle from a folder in Google
Reader
• Generate RSS link for entire bundle
• Paste URL into
http://thegramanator.appspot.com/
Add ?n=70 to URL to get more results!
• Credit for original idea and Gramanator tool: Ian Lurie,
Portent Interactive

29. • Paste the raw text into www.tagxedo.com
or www.wordle.net

31. • Spot trending topics
• Visualize blog and twitter activity
• Google blog search trending topics
you’re not familiar with
• Plan blog posts around what’s hot
• Blog ideas from this example…:
• School senior posing tips
• Wedding close-up tips
• Photography wall displays
• Photography business tips

32. • A feed with 500+ new posts per hour is
not a great feed
• A feed with 3 new posts per day is also
no good
• Make sure your queries align with your
objectives

33. • The output will only be as good as the
inputs
• Find/create at least a dozen quality feeds
• Filter out spam and noise
• Think like a business – what do they write about?
• Think like a customer – what do they write
about?

34. • This is merely a tool for listening and
monitoring
• Should be used to inform a content
strategy
• This fits into step 3 of building a content
marketing machine:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-build-a

35. • We can…
• Develop the strategy
• Create the content
• Measure the results