Marketing Pilgrim has a useful overview of how companies can and should listen in on conversation about them on-line. As more and more conversations by real consumers are being posted, there are more and more ways for you to learn from your audiences, or the people that might be your audience if you listened.
The post offers a bevy of specific suggestions, among them:
- Create custom RSS feeds based on keyword searches: Feedster.com, Technorati.com, IceRocket.com, Google.com/blogsearch, Blogpulse.com, MSN Spaces, Yahoo! News, Google News, MSN News and PubSub.
- Monitor This allows you to monitor a single keyword across 22 different search engine feeds at the same time.
- Filter all feeds into one RSS Reader for easy and time-efficient monitoring options include: Newsgator.com, Bloglines.com, Google Reader or Pluck.com.
- Sign up for Google and Yahoo email alerts using your desired keywords (http://alerts.yahoo.com/ and www.google.com/alerts).
- Determine message boards/forums to track: BoardReader.com, ForumFind.com, Big-Boards.com, BoardTracker.com, iVillage, Yahoo Message Boards, MSN Money
- Determine groups to track: Yahoo Groups, AOL Groups, MSN Groups, Google Groups.
And if your organization isn’t large enough, or your audience not techie enough, to generate a lot of on-line chatter, try monitoring talk about your city, your discipline, the other arts institutions in town.
[ Thanks to Donor Power Blog for the link. ]
