The Fat-Free Guide to Conversation Tracking

Transcription

1 The Fat-Free Guide to Conversation Tracking Using Google Reader as a (Basic) Monitoring Tool. By Ian Lurie President, Portent Interactive Portent.com

2 Legal, Notes and Other Stuff 2009, The Written Word, Inc. d/b/a Portent Interactive and Ian Lurie. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Click here to read the license. That s a fancy way of saying: This book is totally free. Gratis. However, you may only re-use the content in it with my permission. If you like this book, you might want to check out Ian s blog at and his company, at If you want to talk to Ian, you can reach him at ian@portent.com or on Twitter 2

3 What you need to know Nothing. Well, if you want to use this e-book you do need to know how to use a web browser and a search engine. And your brain. But that s it. Here s what you ll know how to do at the end of the book: 1. Set up a Google Reader account. 2. Choose the keywords and conversations you need to track. 3. Track a Google Alert in Google Reader. 4. Track Twitter conversations in Google Reader. 5. Track conversations on several other sites (yes, using Google Reader). 6. Tag, organize and save stuff you want to read again later. If you already know how to use Google Reader, Google Alerts and RSS, you can skim through this book in a few minutes. If you don t, give yourself minutes. 3

4 You only have 2 ears Actually, this page should be titled You only have 1 brain. With sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and such, people can be talking about your brand in dozens (if not hundreds) of different places. It s like you re at a party with 300 million people, and they re all talking about you, occasionally glancing your way. But you can t be listening in on them all. And that creates a problem: How can you monitor all of those different conversations? I do not talk about any paid monitoring tools. There are some great ones out there, and I encourage you to research them, but I m not in a good position to recommend one solution over another. If you can t afford it, though, you can set up a basic conversation monitoring tool using Google Reader and a few search tools. That s what this little e-book is all about. 4

5 Step 1: Create a Google Account If you already have a Google account - meaning you use Gmail and/or other Google services that require a username and password - you can skip ahead to the next page. If you don t, it s time to get one: 1. In your web browser, go to 2. Click create an account now : All done. 3. Fill out the form that appears. 5

6 Step 2: Log in to Google Reader In your web browser, go to Log in using your Google account. You ll see something like this: 6

7 Step 3: Take a breath You now have all the tools you need. Now it s time to take a breath, and a step back, and figure out what you want to track. If you re tracking reputation, then you want to know: When folks say something nice about you. When folks say something not-so-nice about you. Reputation monitoring uses keyword searches, so you ll need to figure out what keywords to use. Start with these: your company name name of CEO name of any other well-known person at company your company name sucks (add any other, uh, adjectives you want - I won t type em here) your company name great your product name common mispelling of your company name Be sure to use the quotes. This narrows your search and winnows out a lot of irrelevant results. You get the idea. List these on a sheet of paper, or in a text file, or, if you re really organized, in a spreadsheet. You can also send it around to your team and let them add their ideas. 7

8 Interlude: This works for lots of stuff You can use this idea to track more than reputation. Some examples of other conversations I monitor: Google patents (I m obsessive about that) Toyota Prius mileage (I m obsessive about that, too) LA Lakers trade Seattle kids activities museum of flight event If it s got a keyword search, you can monitor it. 8

9 Step 4: Test your searches Before you put in the time to set up all of these alerts, test your searches. Try each search on: search.twitter.com The last two are optional. But you definitely want to try Google and Twitter. A good search shouldn t show irrelevant results in the top 10. Take a look at the next page for examples of a good and bad search results for my own name. 9

10 Step 4: Test your searches Good Bad 10

11 Step 4: Test your searches The search result on the right is bad, because it includes lots of results that have nothing to do with me. I searched on ian. I don t own a Pizzeria. Though come to think of it, that sounds pretty cool. So, I narrowed my search by using ian lurie, instead, and got a more relevant result. That s the phrase to use. 11

12 Step 5: Create your Google Alerts Time to start setting up your Google Reader monitoring system. I know - finally! We ll start with Google Alerts: 1. Go to 2. Log in using your Google account (if you re already logged in, you ll go directly to the alerts page). You ll see something like this: 12

13 Step 5: Create your Google Alerts 3. Click creating one. 4. Enter your search (remember, with the quotes!) and select feed as your deliver to option: 5. Click create alert. Done! You ve got an alert. 6. Now, click View in Google Reader: 13

14 Step 5: Create your Google Alerts Google Reader appears, showing your new alert. You re now subscribed: If you click on the Feeds for Google Alerts, you ll see a generic message. It takes as much as an hour or more for the alert to update. Once it does, you ll start seeing search results: 14

15 Interlude: Rinse & repeat OK, now complete Step 5 for all of your search phrases. TIP: Step 5 adds alerts from search results on Google web search, blog, news, video and groups search. You can narrow that, if you want, by changing the type : 15

16 Step 6: Track Twitter Now that you ve got your Google alerts set up, you can add Twitter. I like to track Twitter results because it s near-real-time - if someone Tweets about you, it ll show up in a feed within a few minutes. 1. Go to search.twitter.com. 2. Enter your search and click Search. You ll get a list of every tweet that includes your search phrase: (One of my posts got translated into Czech - you ll see lots of stuff in English) 16

17 Step 6: Track Twitter 3. Look for the little Feed for this query link: 17

18 Step 6: Track Twitter 4. Right-click the link and select copy link or copy link location or the equivalent: 18

19 Step 6: Track Twitter 4. OR, if right-clicking doesn t work, just click the link and then copy the address that shows up in your browser s address bar: 19

20 Step 6: Track Twitter 5. Go to Google Reader, and click Add Subscription : 6. Paste in the URL you copied: 20

21 Step 6: Track Twitter 7. Click Add, and voila, you re tracking that search result in Google Reader: 21

22 Interlude: Rinse & repeat OK, now complete Step 6 for all of your search phrases. TIP: You can track Facebook, too! On Google, set up an alert for site: keyphrase, where the keyphrase is whatever you re monitoring. That will return results for that phrase that appear on publicly-viewable pages on Facebook. 22

23 Step 7: Get Creative You can use Google Reader to track any search result on any site that provides a feed for search results. On Yahoo!, look for the feed icon in your browser s address bar: On most other search engines, look for icons like these: You can track any search results you want, via a feed. Copy the URL and paste it into Google Reader, and you re good to go. 23

24 Step 8: Get organized Now you ve got lots of feeds, in a huge disorganized mess: Time to get organized. 24

25 Step 8: Get organized There are several ways to annotate, organize and group feeds and individual posts using: Folders, to group feeds together. Tags, to organize and label individual items. Stars, to mark content you really want to keep around. Folders are a must. You create them from the Feed Settings drop-down: 25

26 Step 8: Get organized Once you create the folder, it ll appear on the left-hand side. When you add a new search, you can click Feed Settings and place the search results list in that folder. You can also place a search results feed in a folder by click-and-dragging it. You must create, at a minimum, one folder per keyword search. Then put all of the searches - Google, Twitter and others - for that keyword search in that single folder: Each folder becomes a conversation, tracking whose talking about you, your brand or something else in a particular way. 26

27 Step 8: Get organized At this point you ve got a page that s organized like this: 27

28 Step 8: Get organized Click on a single item and it expands, like this: Click the title and you ll go to the source web site: 28

29 Step 8: Get organized If you need to remember one specific item, click add star : It s now saved to your starred items list. You can find all of your starred items under Starred items (imagine that) on the left-hand side. Finally, you can tag individual items with any keyword you want. Just click edit tags and type in the word or phrase: I use tags to identify the type of response: Good, bad, ugly, customer, etc.. 29

30 Step 8: Get organized The tags then appear underneath your folders, on the left: Click any of the tags to see every individual item you ve tagged. 30

31 Interlude: Click around Now that everything s set up, use it for a few days. Every day (or hour, if you re really paranoid) check the contents of each folder for new stories, Tweets and other conversations that mention the keywords you re tracking. Spend some time clicking around. Try different combinations of tags and see how it works. Get used to using Google Reader. Also, here are a few shortcut keys, if you want to zip around Google Reader even faster: J K T S Go to the next item Go to the previous item Tag the item Star the item 31

32 One last bit: Sharing You can share folders and tags with the public (or your boss). Click Manage subscriptions at the lower left: 32

33 One last bit: Sharing Click the Folders and Tags tab: Then click the share icon next to any folder or tag. Bingo - you re now sharing that information. You can send the URL to colleagues and they can check it out, too. 33

34 Where to go from here You can learn a lot more about Google Reader by clicking help : It s actually helpful! Hard to believe, I know. 34

35 There s More. If you want to learn more about social media in general, check out these blogs: ConversationMarketing.com - That s me. SEOMoz.org - A great resource for learning SEO and social media, and the overlap. CopyBlogger.com - Lots to learn about copywriting and social media. And, in an utterly blatant plug, two books I wrote: My first book - available in HTML for free, or in paperback. The Dummies Book 35

36 About Ian Lurie & Portent Ian Lurie is an internet marketer and president of Portent Interactive. He started the company in He co-authored the Web Marketing All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies, Conversation Marketing, the book, and Conversation Marketing, the blog. Portent Interactive is a full-service internet marketing agency in Seattle, WA. Portent helps companies optimize: Web site e-commerce and lead generation conversion rates; Search engine rankings; Paid search and overall online ad spend. Portent s clients include Advertising Age Magazine, AutoWeek, Princess, Kindermusik, Trump University and Attachmate Corporation. 36

37 Contacting Ian Blog: 37

38 It s OK... If someone gave you this book, great! I told them they could pass it on. 38