above the fold (social media)

But what does that really mean and how do you do it?

Getting your ear to the ground with a few great (not to mention, free) tools is the first step. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of some of the best free applications for social media monitoring out there.

Free Tools You've Probably Been Hearing A Lot About:

Addictomatic  (www.addictomatic.com)

PLUS:

• On the surface, Addictomatic works like any other search engine. But on closer inspection, it produces results from several live social sites on the Internet -including YouTube, Twingly, Twitter, Flickr and Wordpress.

• It displays all of those results on one well-organized page. And, you can personalize your results dashboard to make searching that much simpler in the future.

MINUS:

• Addictomatic does not include results from Facebook, Stumbleupon or Vimeo.

Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts)

PLUS:

• Google Alerts remain a time-tested means of getting recently published pages on the web automatically delivered to your inbox.

• By simply creating a Google account and registering your brand name or keywords, Google’s crawler will send a link to any matching content within a day or so.

MINUS:

• At times, Google Alerts can be inconsistent and take a bit longer than 24 hours to reach your inbox.

• Google Alerts do not return any search results from live social sites like Twitter, Facebook or Digg.

Social Mention (www.socialmention.com)

PLUS:

• Social Mention is an easy-to-use social search engine that produces results from social media sites all over the Internet.

• You may choose to get search engine results from all social media sites in general or tailor your results to display only the results from the sources you choose.

• Social Mention features social media alerts that function exactly like Google Alerts. You can have them sent to your inbox once a week, once a day, or as they happen.

• This is virtually the only social monitoring tool that includes a Facebook search.

MINUS:

• If real time information is what you’re after, sometimes the Social Mention alerts function can drop the ball. So don’t depend on waiting to hear what people are saying about your brand. Seek it out through the site's homepage.

Twitter Search (www.twitter.com)

PLUS:

• Using Twitter’s built-in search function is the most reliable tool to get conversations on the site as they happen.

• You have the opportunity to instantly join or respond to the conversation.

MINUS:

• You cannot set up alerts to notify you when users mention your brand. (You can, however monitor this through Twitter clients like TweetDeck and HootSuite.)

• You may have to dink around with word and space combos or trending hashtags to get the information you’re looking for.

 

The 5 Free Tools You’re Probably Not Using:

TweetScan (www.tweetscan.com)

BASICS:

TweetScan allows you to set up RSS alerts specifically for conversations happening within Twitter. Only a username, email and password are required. Note: You can also search right from the Tweetscan homepage without setting up an account. Email alerts are also available for $20/year.

EXTRAS:

You can archive your own Twitter feed going back to the last 1,000 posts. This means you can export followers into a database and compare it to later numbers. You can even archive past conversations.

Twingly (www.twingly.com)

BASICS:

Twingly is quite simply a blog search engine. This is terrific if you’re looking for user-generated content that may get buried in rankings if you’re searching for a popular topic like the Emmys, for instance.

EXTRAS:

Twingly now features a microblog search, which includes Twitter feeds, of course. The site also allows users to subscribe to blog channels, which are broken out by topic. My top channel picks would be SEO, Social Media News and of course, Robots.

How Sociable? (www.howsociable.com)

BASICS:

How Sociable takes a tally of how visible your brand or keyword topic is across the social web and issues a “visibility score.”

EXTRAS:

Users can sign up for a monthly score alert so they can monitor their brand’s social media visibility month by month.

TweetBeep (www.tweetbeep.com)

BASICS:

TweetBeep is basically a Google Alert for Twitter. Users can monitor hashtags, keywords and @mentions and @replies, all from the comfort of your email inbox.

EXTRAS:

TweetBeep is available in a free package or a premium upgrade, which allows members to track hundreds of keywords a month.

Tweet Volume (www.tweetvolume.com)

BASICS:

TweetVolume, much like Tweetscan, is a great way to monitor keywords on Twitter. The tool allows users to monitor and compare keywords or phrases right next to one another.

EXTRAS:

With TweetVolume, users also have the ability to specify a time frame to search for. For instance, you can find out how many tweets were sent out about your brand around a new product launch.

Did we miss a free tool you think should have made our list? Let us know in the comments below. 

Image by happyshooter on Flickr, licensed by Creative Commons.

Tags: social media, tools, brand monitoring