Social media tools are powerful for quickly and cheaply broadcasting our frames and messages out to the world.  But tools like Twitter and Facebook are also very effective listening devices. NTEN has a useful post on 5 free tools to listen to what people are saying and where they are saying it.   Many of these tools are Twitter-focused, because Twitter is the easiest place to get started in listening.

Google Alerts (alerts.google.com): At the bare minimum, you should use Google Alerts for your organization’s name, acronym, prominent staff names like your ED, and large campaigns you’re working on. Depending on the number of mentions you get, you’ll probably want to set the alerts to come to your inbox as they happen, so you know quickly what’s being said and can determine a response, if needed.

Tweetdeck (tweetdeck.com): Tweetdeck is great because it runs in the background and gives you desktop alerts for mentions, similar to Microsoft Outlook when you get a new email. You can customize the different columns and have an array of search terms for people talking about you on Twitter. For example, mine has the following columns: @ replies of my personal twitter account, @ replies of my organizational account, mentions of “humane society”, mentions of “hsus”, and direct messages.

Tweetbeep (tweetbeep.com): Tweetbeep is essentially Google Alerts for Twitter. Whenever you’re mentioned on Twitter, you’ll get sent an email with details of that mention. You  can specify any search term you want. This is great for people who are not ready for the power of Tweetdeck with all its bells and whistles. Twitter is the most real-time account you have of what people are saying about you, so it’s really important to have a Twitter listening tool that matches your comfort level.

Kurrently (kurrently.com): It is amazing, and scary, how many people still do not lock down the privacy on their Facebook profiles. That’s what makes Kurrently so useful: it’s a search engine for public Facebook updates. It actually now pulls in a lot more than Facebook updates, but that’s what I find it most useful for.

Twitter Analyzer (twitteranalyzer.com): It is very important to think about your goals and how you’re going to measure success when diving into a new online venture, and listening is no different. Twitter Analyzer provides a breadth of statistics it provides and its ease of use. The graphs are pretty, too. It provides data such as number of followers, number of tweets, number of retweets, top hashtags, number of mentions, etc – which are great metrics. For Facebook, check out their built-in analytics for your fan page.

One of the strengths of the online universe is that we can habitually be measuring our impact. We have metric tools for email open rates, Facebook friend counts, blog hits, etc. There are also softer metrics to track, such as: what are people saying about my organization? what kinds of blogs repost my materials? Folks over at Idealware have put together a starter list of tools to track what the online swarms are saying about your organization.  Might be a useful to start building these regular assessments into our strategic communications plans.

Understanding what people have already said:

• Google search (especially after removing your own domain)
• Google Blog search
• Technorati search
• Twitter search
• Facebook?  (any better way than simply searching the Facebook domain on Google?)
• Your website referrer log
• Topic based online communities

Following what they’re saying in real time:

• Google Alerts
• RSS feeds to the above
• Email discussion list monitoring tools
• Creating a dashboard to follow all your feeds

Getting informal feedback

• Existing online communities
• Your own blog or community
• Asking a quick question of your list (and dealing with the answers)

More rigorous research

• Web intercept surveys
• Online survey tools
• Online user testing tools

Two weeks ago a spontaneous network formed using a quirky a little tool called Twitter.  Twitter is a mini-blog posting/instant messaging tool that allows users to post messages of 140 characters or less and follow other people’s “tweets” on their cell phones and computers.

The “mother-mob” network formed in reaction to an ad by the company that makes the pain relief medicine Motrin.  The ad concerned a mother complaining of back pain from carrying her baby in a sling around her neck–and Motrin came to the rescue.  Thousands of mothers in the US found the ad insulting.  The ad ran on Saturday, and by the evening it was the most tweeted subject on Twitter; in one two-hour period, mothers had traded 6000 posts.  By Sunday, according to the NYT, there was a nine minute video on YouTube, to the “tune of Danny Boy, showing screen shots of the outraged twitter posts interspersed with photos of Moms carrying babies in slings.”  By the end of day Sunday the company was forced to take the ad off air and apologize.

Why did these mothers use Twitter instead of traditional blogs or simple websites? Because Twitter is hyper-interactive.  Permitting only 140 characters per post, Twitter forces users to be short and pithy, thereby allowing thousands of overlapping “voices” to be “heard” over a very short period of time. Short and sweet enables Twitter to efficiently tap into the fundamental human desire for self-expression and shared communication.

As each Twitter Mom saw their own “tweets” jumbled with thousands of others streaming across their screens, they felt part of dynamic network gathering momentum.  They felt their social power (whether it is sustainable power is another matter.)

Here’s a video wrap-up of the campaign…

Ustream.TV is a free, live interactive video broadcast service that allows anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size.

The service claims that it takes less than two minutes to create your own channel on Ustream or broadcast on your own site (Even though it appears easy to use, it’s well worth doing a trial run with these kind of tools before trying to use them for an important project). The service is currently used for live broadcasting of:

• Major political events such as debates, speeches, rallies
• Talk shows and concerts and entertainment events
• Conference sessions and school/business events and training
• Sporting events at college and high school level
• Personal milestones such as holiday gatherings, weddings, grade school events, parties, even births
• Interactive games for viewers to watch or join

Noticeably absent are community events, protests, teach-ins, etc. Since it’s relatively easy to embed the broadcast into your organization’s website, grassroots groups might begin to use the site to livecast demonstrations or rallies, preceded by a press release, so lazy or cash-strapped journalists can cover events without leaving the office.  Members who are unable to leave home–because of child care duties or infirmity, for example–might follow events from their homes.  Allied groups fighting similar struggles around the country–stopping foreclosures, for example–might tune in to learn new strategies or for inspiration.