Tracking conversations is a big part of using social media. Lots of online tools help with monitoring, but very few have the capability to search across all social media tools. Enter Social Mention.
Social Mention is a “real time search engine.” This tool searches through user-generated content across different types of social media such as blogs, microblogging services, comments, news, events, videos and bookmarks.
Social Mention also provides more than search results: A social rank score, based on popularity, is given to each search. The rank includes the time of the last mention of the search term as well as how often the search term is mentioned (i.e. Obama was mentioned every 26 minutes). The amount of online content generated from different sources is also populated and shared. Users can also search the RSS Feed and compile all search results in a CSV/Excel spreadsheet. A tag cloud of related terms is also included.
Popular social media sources Social Mention aggregates results from includes:
- Google blog search
- Delicious
- FriendFeed
- Flickr
- Digg
- YouTube
Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees
Positive: Individuals and especially organizations can monitor their online presence using Social Mention. The amount of information this search engine provides – across different sources – is very valuable. The search engine is very organized and easy to use. Additionally, Social Mentions helps organizations engage with their stakeholders.
Negative: Similar to all other search engines, Social Mention might not catch everything. If an organization wanted a comprehensive view of their online presence, a secondary check in other search engines or tools is necessary.
Conclusion: Social Mention is great to use for quick searches. In a recent study by Nielson Media, more marketers are planning to increase spending in social media this year. Social Mention will definitely help organizations learn if they’re leveraging social media to their advantage.
Another free monitoring tool you should take a look at is http://www.samepoint.com. Similar to Social Mention, Samepoint allows you to search for keyword mentions across all major social media categories – from Twitter to social bookmarks, to social networks, to blogs, comments, podcasts, events, reviews, and more.
Richard – Thanks for the information about Samepoint!