You are probably familiar with using Google Alerts as a way to keep track of the online buzz around brands, subjects and other search terms. But of course these days, so many of our hours spent online are done so in the social sphere – social networking, blogging, tweeting etc, so we really should be keeping track of our mentions in that realm as well. But how do we go about that?
Well let us draw your attention to this bad boy – Social Mention – a new, nifty little platform that can be used to aggregate all of the user generated content on a particular set of keywords from the whole of the web, into one, consolidated stream. Wondrous, no? Simple and incredibly useful? Definitely.
One of Social Mention’s most useful functions is their Social Media Alert feature, which they describe on the site as ‘like Google Alerts but for social media’. You simply enter your search term and receive regular e-mail updates telling you how many times it has been referenced.
You can also use the tool by installing a widget that will track a search term in real time. Simply add the Realtime Buzz Widget to your site and watch the world talk about you! Or if you’d like to keep track of, for example, a variety of clients on an adhoc basis, you can install the Browser Search Plugin. also says there is a iGoogle Gadget coming soon.
Why Do You Need Strength, Sentiment and Passion to use Social Mention?
There is a little bit of lingo that you might want to learn if you’re going to use this platform. When we say ‘a little bit’ we mean it (there are 4 words to be precise) but a little knowledge goes a long way, so allow us to share ours:
Strength – when Social Mention refers to strength, it’s talking about the likelihood that your brand, or search term, is being discussed on social media. Strength = the amount of mentions in the last 24 hour period divided by the amount of possible mentions.
Sentiment – this is pretty obvious really. It’s the ratio of generally positive to generally pretty negative responses that your search has received.
Passion – this is the likelihood that the same individuals will continue to mention your brand or phrase. So if the whole world tweets about you once you’ll still have a lower passion score than a local brand with a small group of devotees.
Reach – the number of people mentioning the phrase divided by the total number of overall mentions is the reach. This is the measure of your range of influence.
