Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

So recently I’ve been really getting into microblogging (aka lifestreaming or twittering). I briefly tried out Twitter a few months ago, but didn’t really get into it. I didn’t see the value aside from letting people know I was going to grocery store or reading a book. Since then though, I’ve seen the light. Now granted, it has a lot of uses, but be forewarned, once you put your toe into the twitter pond, it can quickly become a deluge of data, a inundation of information, a massive amount of media, a…well, you get the point.

These tools are great ways to stay on top of those conversations and still maintain some sanity and keep your job. Let’s go through some of the tools that I use every day:

Ping.fm:
First, Ping is fantastic! If you don’t already have an account, sign up today. There have been a few other status updating services, but this one is by far the best. It allows you to update as many statuses as you want, at once. The one caveat to this though is that it’s really good for saving time, but if you tailor your message to each individual community, it’s still probably best to visit each site individually. (i.e. I post stuff to Twitter and Friendfeed that I would not necessarily post to LinkedIn.)

Friendfeed
Friendfeed, if you’re not already familiar, is a social media aggregator. You supply feeds from your social media universe (Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Netflix, Vimeo, YouTube, etc. etc. etc.) and it pulls in all of your activity, as well as anyone else who you want to follow on Friendfeed (ala Twitter functionality). Beyond just following, Friendfeed also has intelligent suggestions built in, whereby if I am following say Jeremiah Owyang or Adam Ostrow, it will also show me what their friends are doing as well. I’m assuming this is done based on these people I’m following, interacting with their friends in some manner, which tells Friendfeed to also suggest this content. If someone has a better idea, I’d love to know. Maybe Bret knows.

Plurk:
Plurk is another Twitter clone and there’s been much back and forth as to whether Twitter is better or whether Plurk is better. At the end of the day, Twitter is better because of two factors. First to market and lack of “karma”. Karma is a fun idea that Plurk tried to implement, but which has a divisive effect.  You either love it and stick around, or hate it and leave quickly. I was of the latter camp and didn’t bother to come back. Now, I still update Plurk as part of Ping.fm settings, but it doesn’t go beyond that. It’s again, mostly a content redistribution channel with some Friendfeed functionality. The one thing I will give them credit for is an interesting take of the time stream interface. I also like their quirky graphic design sense and built in user incentive chotchkies.

Adobe Air
Ok, so maybe this isn’t an official twitter application, but since it’s launch, I’ve seen some fantastic implementations of the Adobe Air platform which enable applications to make the jump from the web to the desktop. I’m currently running Pandora Desktop, Tweet Deck, Twhirl, and a few others currently.

Twhirl
I actually installed Tweet Deck first and then Twhirl, but I wanted to feature this one first, as it’s become my default Twitter and Friendfeed status monitors. The only thing I would like to see next is a Ping.fm feature incorporated into Twhirl, so I can update each site at once directly from the Twhirl interface. If anyone knows if or when this is coming, let me know.

Tweet Deck
I installed Tweet Deck to see if it was any better/worse than Twhirl. Well, it’s pretty much the same, but without the Friendfeed feature. So I still have it, but don’t use it that often.

Summize:
Summize is great in that it provides better filtering and search functionality than Twitter itself. Actually, scratch that, as those are now one in the same. Guess Twitter caught on to what was needed.

So what’s been my experience and how does it translate into professional/business use?
Well, so far, I can’t say enough good things about it. I’ve seen my attention stream steadily dwindling from email, to blogs, and now microblogging. It provides quick informational segments, which I can digest quickly and easily, while still maintaining my productivity. By installing Twhirl, Twitter and Friendfeed updates come directly to my desktop, instead of having to go back to each respective website and refresh, refresh, refresh. Now, what does that mean for a monetization model for each of these companies? Well, it’s going to come down to either subscription models or some kind of advertising either integrated into the platform itself or each feed.

Granted, there is a lot of noise that occurs on a daily basis, so you have to be cognizant of that. However, it also offers a pulse about the industry and where people’s foci’s are for any given day. Take the last few days for example, when you couldn’t take two breaths before someone was talking about 3G or iPhone apps.

If you’re looking to network with industry leaders, find additional informational resources, learn about industry opinions, or get some quick feedback - these are fantastic tools. But as always, remember to respect the community you are interacting with and interact often. Even if you are not a rockstar today, everyone has to start somewhere.

I’ve signed up for a number of beta invitations lately for reputation monitoring websites. These are web utilities which aggregate mentions of your favorite keywords: “chicago marketing”, “chicago seo”, “lindsey lohan”, whatever. The one feature that some of the newer sites have over previous iterations are historic records. Let’s review some of the oldies, but goodies first:

Google Alerts

Any savvy marketer should already have Google alerts set up and running on a daily basis. Google alerts is nice in that it’s first and foremost, free. It’s also reliable and very easy to set up and turn off. In case you’re not already familiar, Google alerts allows you to enter a key phrase or set of keywords and create daily, “as it happens”, and weekly alerts. The as-it-happens alerts can be both very useful, but also very overwhelming if you are in a volatile field. It’s good for product launches or PR campaigns, where instant feedback from customers/users is vital for the success of the launch For example, Company A launches a website. 100,000 people sign up instantly. The website crashes. The blogosphere goes crazy. Google alerts in a great way to head off these issues. The only issue with Google alerts is that if you have a broad keyword or huge brand (i.e. Honda), you’re going to get everything under the sun in terms of references, so make sure to be super specific when creating these alerts.

Google Trends

Similar to the volume of email you receive from Google alerts, Google trends allows you to see patterns of mentions over time. In this example of Honda versus Toyota, you can see the mentions associated with each brand over time. This is a good utility to use to see if your PR efforts have paid off over time. Google trends will even show major spikes in traffic and pull in related news materials for the time scale you select (i.e last 30 days, last 12 months, etc.). This is an excellent tool to use in conjunction with Google alerts.

Ok now to the new fun stuff…

Trackur

Trackur bills themselves as “Google alerts on steroids”, which is a pretty bold claim, as Google alerts already does a pretty good job. So what does Trackur do that alerts doesn’t? Well, first off I have to say, I’ve never actually used Trackur, so I’m only relating what their websites says. Anyone who has actually used it, let me know if it’s worth $18/month to start. Trackur says that it searches all media, not just Google (which is what Google alerts searches - but on a sidenote, Google seems to have a pretty good handle on the world’s information, so what else is Trackur searching?). Trackur also allows for more in depth filtering than Google alerts along with saving mentions of your keywords for later review and sharing them with colleagues. Overall, I’m still a bit skeptical without being able to a direct comparison to Google alerts. They do have a free 14 day trial, so if you sign up and find it’s a good fit, let me know in the comments.

Addict-o-Matic

Addict-o-matic is egosurfing on steroids. You can quote me on that, addict-o-matic marketing department. Addict-o-matic is nice in that it pulls in search queries from many different websites in one easy-to-view search interface. Looking up a popular brand, Facebook, yields some pretty fun results from numerous sites without actually having to run out to those sites. This tool can be useful as a daily checkup on any brand doing social media optimization for videos images, blog posts, twitter, etc. A great future feature would be to provide updates to users if anything changes on these pages, so I don’t have to continually come back. Ah well, it’s free and it works.

FiltrBox

I’ve been using Filtrbox for the last few days to monitor some of my clients mentions on the web. It’s got a really slick interface, and again, it’s free. Like Google alerts, you enter search criteria and it sends you daily alerts as to the status of the keyword mentions it finds. You can also chart mentions over time, similar to Google Trends. You can also add direct plugins for source material from mainstream media, the blogosphere, Twitter, and Twitter’s nemesis, Friendfeed. It also provides some really nice login structuring to allow for deep filtering. So I can create a filter that says “honda AND (toyota OR chrysler) AND EXCLUDE hybrid AND SUV”. It also allows for direct importing from Google alerts, which is the mark of someone who knows who their competitors are and embraces it. Nicely done Filtrbox!