New Listening Tool: Who Is Talking About You?

WhosTalkin is a new social media search tool that makes it easy to search multiple social media sources.  It has a clean interface where you an easily scan and click through to mentions of your organization on blogs, micro media, news, forums, social bookmarking sites, social networking sites, and other places where people are talking about you.  It is free, but if you want to grab the results in a RSS Feed, it looks like that will be part of pro service.   There isn't any functionality that lets you summarize or visualize the data, slice and dice the results, or integrate into your workflow like Radian 6.  

I listen in many different ways.  Powerful listening is done through Radian 6, but I also have a Rube Goldberg like set up of RSS feeds from about 25 different sources that search on my name, my blog url, and the various misspellings.  (I also monitor specific topics, tags, or keywords depending on what I'm researching)  WhosTalkin would eliminate the time to track down the places to search and the hassle of setting them up in your RSS reader.   You'd still need to hone your listening goals which are independent of any tool you might use.

My listening baby steps started with Google Alerts via email, but I found that it didn't catch everything.  And, the last thing I needed to do was get more email.   Google Alerts now has RSS feeds and I read those in my RSS Reader.  I am able to compare what source captures what. One thing you won't eliminate is the overlap.   After you've set some actionable organizational listening goals, if you are the person doing the listening, you need to have powerful scanning skills, pattern recognition, and a good sense of how to tweak keywords.  Otherwise, you'll get overwhelmed and distracted.

What my Rube Goldberg set up of RSS feeds doesn't have is a sweep through social networks. WhosTalkin has searches through the major online social networks.  It's fascinating to see who is talking about you in the LinkedIn questions.

It is another tool for your listening tool box! 

Listening Resources

• Listening in a Blizzard by Beth Kanter
• Top 10 Reputation Tools Worth Paying For  by Dan Schwabel
• 8 ways to get the most from listening tools from Liz Strauss
• How To Stay Informed on CTC VISTA Using RSS and Google Alerts by Morgan Sully, CTC VISTA Project (specific to this org, but can be used anywhere)
• Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation by Dan Schwabel, Mashable
• The Art of Listening by Brian Solis
• How To Set Up A Nonprofit Listening Post on Twitter
• WeAreMedia Listening Module (examples of nonprofits using listening techniques) 
• Way Beyond News Alerts by Gordon Meyer

Who do you currently listen for what people are saying about you, your organization or issue?  What tools are you using?  What do you think are the most skills for effective social media listening?

Comments

[Todd Jordan]

Beth,

I'll be giving this a try. I've not done a good job of listening.

That should be at the top of my list for sure, and your toolbox is a great start.

[Neil Williams]

Thanks for sharing this one Beth, it's a great tool. Shame there's no free RSS but it's still well worth bookmarking.

Would be interesting to compare to the Social Media Firehose and see how the results differ.

[ExploreMyBlog]

Thanx for providing us such a good website for Social Media, I think it seems very useful for people who are linked with Social Media and Social networking.

I discovered another great blog for Social Media which completely covers Social media and Web2.0.

http://www.ExploreMyBlog.Com

Explore the Blog and you will feel that some one write accurate and perfect about Social media blogs.

[John Eckman]

Interesting that they didn't get whostalking.com - so you have to remember the dropped 'g.' What, is the site run by Sarah Palin?

;)

Will definitely be a worthwhile service when you can save searches and get rss feed of results - otherwise it takes time to click through all the categories and review what is found.

[Joe Hall]

Hey Beth thanks so much for talking about my latest creation! This tool is a pleasant step away from what I usually to at jozsoft.com there we do a lot of work with nonprofits so this is a great to see how non-profits might use something else that I have created. Thanks again and get intouch with any ideas or thoughts about how WhosTalkin.com can better serve non-profits!

[Danielle Brigida]

This is wonderful! Bookmarked and excited to improve my "listening" techniques.

[Connie Bensen]

Hi Beth,
Have you found that Google Alerts delivered via RSS are as comprehensive as the email ones? It seemed like it missed many.

We have the Freemium version of Techrigy SM2 that gathers conversations across a full range of sources. The rss feed is available in both the free & Pro version.