GoogleReader + SocialMention + PostRank = ORM for free ;-)

I had been postponing to write this for a couple weeks, but a link shared on PostRank Twitter account left me no choice but to hurry up.

Social Media Monitoring is now an essential part of any brand, corp or product marketing plan. Between tools like Radian6, BuzzMetrics, TechRigy, one can also use free tools like Google Alerts to monitor mentions of keywords or brand name in the news. It’s way too late to get any decent readership with a “How to Monitor Your Brand With Google Alerts” but add a SocialMention.com feed to the mix and you just spiced up an old recipe, allowing monitoring of social media platforms. And everybody likes good free online reputation monitoring tools.

Btw, SocialMention is a great social media search engine developed by Jon Cianciullo in Ottawa.

Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.

SocialMention also uses Backtype API to monitor blog comments.

So that’s what this guy did and he created a video tutorial to show how to do it. Super simple.

So what I am adding to this ?

Well, one problem with this method (and with most monitoring services) is that you can rapidly get an avalanche of alerts and you will most likely spend a good amount of time flying through the list to see what could be relevant. On top of that, that does not tell you the reach or range of influence of these results. You’ll have to look it up yourself to see if these links where bookmared on delicious, shared on twitter, if they have comments and so on. Lengthy process.

The magic trick ? PostRank by AideRSS.

PostRank is a scoring system developed by AideRSS to rank any kind of online content, such as RSS feed items, blog posts, articles, or news stories. PostRank is based on social engagement, which refers to how interesting or relevant people have found an item or category to be. Examples of engagement include writing a blog post in response to someone else, bookmarking an article, leaving a comment on a blog, or clicking a link to read a news item.

Available as a GreaseMonkey Script or a FireFox extension, it will basically gives a 0 to 10 ranking score to any item in your Google Reader List and allows you to filter out result based on their PostRank score. Look at your Google Alerts + postrankSocialMention feed in list mode and instantly know which one are worth looking at, based on the social engagement they generated.

That’s it, a cheap and manageable Online Reputation Management tool. Not perfect, but worth trying.

If you need more info about integrating PostRank with Google Reader, look at this.

EDIT:

Both (mine and Intelligendo) explanation kinda skimp over what you should be monitoring.

Marty Weintraub create a great tutorial on how to do this and how to choose search terms for monitoring

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June 12, 2009
  • Hayden Sutherland

    Question:
    Could it therefore be possible to use an application such a Yahoo Pipes to combine a feed for a (brand) term from Social Mention with its PostRank score? This could then give you an instant update of the usage and influence of the term.

  • http://httpl//press20.blogspot.com Hayden Sutherland

    Question:
    Could it therefore be possible to use an application such a Yahoo Pipes to combine a feed for a (brand) term from Social Mention with its PostRank score? This could then give you an instant update of the usage and influence of the term.

  • philgo20

    Yes, using PostRank API you could monitor the PostRank of a feed in time to get a timelime of user engagement around your brand or product. Not sure I would use Yahoo Pipes but it’s certainly an idea I’d like to play with.

  • philgo20

    Yes, using PostRank API you could monitor the PostRank of a feed in time to get a timelime of user engagement around your brand or product. Not sure I would use Yahoo Pipes but it’s certainly an idea I’d like to play with.

  • http://blog.postrank.com/ Melanie Baker

    I do love a good mashup — kudos for the post! :)

    For those interested in monitoring not only themselves, you can expand your efforts to competitors or your market, too. Just take those monitoring site/search term feeds, pop them into PostRank, filter to whatever level you want, tag them with the appropriate descriptor(s) to create a topic and aggregate them all under it, and then, if you like, export them out to your favourite reader, and voila — one-stop shopping for monitoring your competitors, the market you serve, an industry, or just your own company’s mentions.

  • http://blog.postrank.com Melanie Baker

    I do love a good mashup — kudos for the post! :)

    For those interested in monitoring not only themselves, you can expand your efforts to competitors or your market, too. Just take those monitoring site/search term feeds, pop them into PostRank, filter to whatever level you want, tag them with the appropriate descriptor(s) to create a topic and aggregate them all under it, and then, if you like, export them out to your favourite reader, and voila — one-stop shopping for monitoring your competitors, the market you serve, an industry, or just your own company’s mentions.

  • http://philgo20.com/ philgo20

    Both (mine and Intelligendo) explanation kind skimp over what you should be monitoring.

    Marty Weintraub create a great tutorial on how to do this and how to choose search terms for monitoring :

    http://www.aimclearblog.com/2009/03/16/how-to-build-a-reputation-monitoring-dashboard/

  • http://philgo20.com philgo20

    Both (mine and Intelligendo) explanation kind skimp over what you should be monitoring.

    Marty Weintraub create a great tutorial on how to do this and how to choose search terms for monitoring :

    http://www.aimclearblog.com/2009/03/16/how-to-build-a-reputation-monitoring-dashboard/

  • philgo20

    Social Mention head developer informed me that he just added PostRank to SocialMention search results. SocialMention is getting better and better

  • philgo20

    Social Mention head developer informed me that he just added PostRank to SocialMention search results. SocialMention is getting better and better

  • Pingback: Are we expecting too much from Social Media Monitoring tools ? | PhilGo20

  • http://www.monitorlcd17.org Monitor LCD 17

    I actually do enjoy a good mashup — thanks for the article! :)

    For people enthusiastic about monitoring not only themselves, an individual can expand the efforts to competitors as well as the market, too. Just take those people monitoring site/search term rss feeds, crop up them into PostRank, filtration system to whatever amount an individual want, tag them with the appropriate descriptor(azines) to create a topic and aggregate them all below this, and then, if you’d prefer, foreign trade them out to the favourite reader, and voila — one-stop shopping for monitoring the competitors, the market an individual function, an industry, or maybe your own personal company’s mentions.