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Top 5 Lists of free tools for SMM, buzz monitoring & finding “bla bla…”

2009/04/13

The Cluetrain Manifesto shouted it out loud to us in ’98: “Listen to the conversations taking place on-line. Now!” We all (well, those of us in the know) replied: “Yes, that is so true…”, and for the next 10 years we did almost nothing about it. We call ourselves Internet marketing gurus and stuff, and give each other awards. Can I have the one for “Greatest Hypocrite”? Any other takers?

1st Prize for Hypocracy

1st Prize for Hypocracy

Here are the 5 best compilations I’ve found that list free tools for SMM, buzz monitoring and tracking, reputation management, social web search, ego-searching in cronological order:

  1. Smashing Magazine, November 24th, 2006 (Links checked: May/09 2008)
    Web 2.0: Buzz-Monitoring and Tracking

    This is a cool list. In a sense it is almost ‘old school’ (I mean: 2006! Wouw!), yet relevant even today. And check out the comments! Many are brand new. Not many blog posts are able to live well for 2.5 years. I bow in respect.

  2. Mashable.com, December 24th, 2008
    Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation

    Some good ones, but w. some flaws e.g. filtrbox isn’t really free, and a Top 10 is just too superficial. Still, worth checking out!

  3. BuzzStream Blog, post by Jeremy Bencken on February 24, 2009
    Social Media Monitoring on the Cheap

    Few but top quality links. Some directly to SMM tools, some to other ‘on topic’ blogs. Also links to some commercial tools.
  4. interactive insights group, March 30th, 2009 by Robin Broitman
    How-To: Search the Social Web – Ultimate Toolkit [MY FAVORITE!]

    This is a very very elaborate list of tools that even I have to do some more work on. Each tool is briefly introduced, and though the list isn’t even exhaustive, it is really inspiring.

  5. masternewmedia.org, March 30, 2009
    Buzz Tracking And Social Media Monitoring: Best Tools To Do Ego Searching And Find Out Who Is Talking About Me – Mini-Guide

    Yes, this is a mini guide (especially compared to the former no. 3) that has an OK comparison table for the mentioned tools. My eye for detail and style, values the post, but the blog itself is a big messy :-) and too ad-heavy.

Yup, I may have missed some that have popped up in the past two weeks, so please post those links in your comments.

Soon I’ll give you a full run down of the commercial services. That’ll be couple of dozen in the US, and a handful from Europe. Would a Google Map be nice?

Kim M.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , , |

3 comments

  1. Cluetrain is one of my favorite books of all time, how could it have taken us this long to listen to the customer? What happened to the “Customer is always right” mantra? If you owned a store and a friend called you and said their uncle had a bad experience in your store you would listen and probably take action. People pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for focus groups when they could just start listening to the real time data for free. It’s another way to Hug Your Customers (another fav book).

         by shenan 2009/04/17 at 06:29
    Reply

  2. thanks for the help on my twitter status “search for free SMM”. :)

         by marizas 2009/04/29 at 12:15
    Reply

  3. Here’s a couple to add to the insight/confusion:

    http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/26-free-tools-for-buzz-monitoring.html

    http://econsultancy.com/blog/3890-20-free-buzz-monitoring-tools

    If you have a mjor/multilingual brand do you really have the time, resources and people to track,analyse and extract insight from all these?

         by Jonathan Moody 2009/06/08 at 10:57
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