Imagine if you will, being able to tap into conversations with specific keywords and such that directly relate to your brand, your business and exactly what you do. It would allow you to be more efficient with the time you spend on social media. Welcome to, well, this blog post!

Sure, it’s cutting edge stuff, and most businesses don’t really understand it all that well. And, don’t think this kind of prospecting is cheap my any means, but there are some tools out there than the small business owner can use to accomplish some of the same things- finding conversations that directly relate to your business.

It works like this- there are bazillions of conversations that occur on all the social media channels, and a percentage of them either indirectly or directly relate to your business. If you provide a vital service (like say, digital marketing. Hmm!), you would naturally have a list of keywords that pertain to what you do (web design, website design, social media marketing, SEO, etc). Developing this list and referring to it while using these tools can alert you to conversations that are related to those terms. You can then insert your message into that thread which can lead to higher engagement, conversions and mo’ money!

Now, some business owners are still thinking they don’t need to be on social media- that it’s just a fad, it’ll go away, etc. My response to those people is simple. Is your target market there? If the answer is yes (which it obviously is!), then if you’re not there talking to your people, your competitors are. That means you’re ignoring a major avenue to the very people that are looking for what you do. To us, that’s leaving money on the table.

But, the question always comes around to “How do I know if I’m doing well?” It’s a good questions certainly, but it also depends upon your goals for social media- increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your site? Make sales? Regardless, measuring your efforts requires you to look at some data or social analytics.

The cheapest way to check your social analytics is to look at the data each channel provides. That tells you at least some basic numbers like “likes”, “shares”,” +1’s”, etc. Besides what’s available there, you can always check out these:

• Google Analytics-if nothing else, you can see which channels are feeding your website
• Cyfe-free to start, upgrade to $29/month
• Agorapulse- helps you measure your FB & Twtter, some free stuff, $29/mo
• Sprout Social-pretty analytics $60/month

Social Media Monitoring

Different from just measuring how well things are going, social media monitoring is where you’re actually plugging in to conversations about your business. Think of it as listening to Twitter or the others for posts about what you do so that you can jump in there and engage at the right time with the right people. Powerful stuff! As with any other listening, there are two types- active & passive listening.

Active listening/monitoring is where you go to a website and plug in your keywords to see what people are saying. Here are some tools that seem useful:

• Addictomatic-let’s you browse a variety of channels across the web
• Social Mention- gives you “mood metrics”
• Topsy-search out trends, topics & discussions about your subject
• Icerocket- let’s you search out and find people mention keywords

Passive social monitoring is where you go to a site, set up some keywords, brands, etc and these tools notify you when a conversation is taking place that might interest you. Some of these tools include:

• Google Alerts
• Buzzsumo-has tools & free account
• Mention-free account, will give alerts
• Hearsaysocial-good for financial, insurance, etc
• Bottlenose-maps the trends
• Gnip-starts at $500

Some of these tools offer both social analytics that’ll help you measure how well you’re doing with your social media as well as social monitoring abilities.

The point is, there are a host of tools that exist to help you become more efficient in what you do to attract people to your business. This gives you a good list to start with to match your business goals and your budget. Now, get out there and start listening!

(See the full boot camp notes on our website at http://makeitloud.net/boot_camp_notes)