Photo credit: suchitra prints
I often am asked how to start monitoring the conversations happening on the web. How do you know what to look for? Where do you begin? How can you save time? How can this information be used to eventually spread the word about what you do??
Ask no more!
Before I begin, I want to state that I work for a social media monitoring company. But, I’m not here to pitch them. I’m here to provide advice for you, the musician who, in entrepreneurial terms, is “bootstrapping” it.
Define what you’re looking for
Why are you out there on the social web? Is it to get press? Keep up with industry news? Spread the word about who you are and what you play? Connect with other musicians?
The first step to successful listening is knowing WHY you’re listening. Figure that out first, and don’t be afraid to include more than one answer! Listening can have multiple purposes.
Find your Audience
Where do people go to connect? Do a basic search for some key terms that seem logical, stemming from your answers above. Perhaps search for names of your band, band members, perhaps groups you think are similar to you in sound or style. Socialmention.com is a great resource for a quick n dirty search, and it will let you search places like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and blogs – all at once. Take note as to where conversations seen to be happening and remember that for later.
Find your Keywords
After you know what you’re looking for and where you should be looking for it, sit down and define your keywords. What do you want to go out looking for? As mentioned above – starting with your brand, any member names, people that sound similar, perhaps your location, or a combination thereof is a good start. Run some test searches and see what results come in. Are the results what you expect? Do you need to eliminate some results? Are there key words you can use (called exclusion keywords) to eliminate groups of irrelevant results?
Try, tweak, and try some more.
Behold the RSS Feed
Learn to love the RSS feed. Don’t know what one is? Learn here.
It works like this. Say you to go Twitter and plug in those lovely keywords you figured out earlier. Look at the results page for a button that looks like sound waves, or something that says something similar to “get an RSS feed of your results”. Click on that and add it to your preferred RSS reader (the way you read these things, sort of like a digest). I use Google Reader, but lots of options exist.
Add the search results via RSS feed to the reader and voilà, the search happens automatically and sends you new results! You now just have to go into the reader and check for them on a regular basis.
You can subscribe to all sorts of things like this. Blogs, Google search results, Twitter search results, etc.
Learn, automate, and manage your time.
So?
So now you’re out there, getting automatic results in on a regular basis for things you want to keep up with. Read them, comment if you feel like it, add people to your network where it makes sense, and enjoy!