How do I monitor what is being said online about our bank?

• Author: Kincy, Jason
• Position: SOCIAL MEDIA - Viewpoint essay

KEEPING YOUR EAR TO THE GROUND for online discussion of your brand is done with specialized online tools. Some of these tools are free, while other more robust solutions require a monthly licensing fee. Take time to play around with the free services and then weigh their functionality versus your available budget before stepping up to a paid monitoring tool. Here's an overview.

Free monitoring tools. The free social media tracking options are the best place to start. Using these basic tools will give you some insight to what's being said and can give you a broad view of discussions about your brand. These free tools can require some patience and sifting through results to find what you are looking for, but the price is right. Below are a few of my favorites:

Google Alerts. The most commonly used tracking tool and one of the oldest. Set up keyword searches for your bank name and you will receive alerts via e-mail or RSS feed as your bank appears on the Web. Set your alerts up at www.google.com/alerts.

Social Mention. A really simple interface provides a search of keyword mentions across many platforms including Face-book, Twitter, images, video and blogs. Also gives you some additional statistics of positive versus negative sentiment, although this can often be inaccurate. Enter your search at www.socialmention.com.

IceRocket. Another easy to use, quick search tool that is most effective for blogs, Twitter and multimedia content. Set up an RSS or e-mail alert for keyword searches at www.icerocket.com.

Paid monitoring tools. If the many free services do not meet your needs or are not as comprehensive as you would like, there are several options available for advanced monitoring. These services do more than just keyword searching, they aggregate data and help you to group and analyze the types of discussions taking place. Ranking mentions in terms of relevance, influence and sentiment help you know which online conversations have the most positive (or negative) impact on your brand. They usually come with...