Jeremiah Owyang recently received an email from one Stephen England, who shared his reasons for not liking blogs. After making his five points in defense of his view, he closes with this line:
"Blogs may have their place – but they’ll never have any place in how I learn more about my business!"
Ignorance is bliss? I say not. Stephen needs to unplug his ears (eyes). He needs to Flip the Funnel and use it as a hearing aide. He may learn something.
"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." – Ernest Hemingway.
Mark True, a Brand Warrior with REL Productions, asks us How Do You Monitor Blogs? He hints at how clipping services are becoming obsolete and offers how he’s begun researching the blogosphere.
I recently gave a retail manager a crash course in how to use feeds/blog search to track items for his top clients. By doing this, his periodic contact with his customers is more of a value to them than a simple itch-cycle scratch.
Here’s what we covered (just the basics – a crash course):
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Set up a Technorati Watchlist to track blogversations about a company. Either the URL or the Company’s name can be plugged into the Watchlist.
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Use Google News to search on a person’s name, for instance: "Mike Sansone" Iowa. Nothing comes up today, but you can still subscribe to the feed.
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Use Google Blog Search to search on a product, for instance: Keppra. If a pharm rep kept this search in his feed, he’d be all the wiser as to what the consumers are saying – and able to share that with the doctors.
Each of these tools allow you to subscribe to the feed. In other words, Search Once and Subscribe.
There are other tools and techniques that can be utilized to benefit your business. That’s one reason the next Iowa Business Blog Workshop focuses on Building Business Relationships Using Social Software.
So what tools do you use to track blogs? Visit Mark True’s blog and let him know – or better yet, answer his question on your blog and point to his question (extend the conversation).
Related posts:
- Get in the Routine of Feed Reading
- Blogging Has Two Roles…
- Have Your Say – It’s Important to Somebody
- I Hear a Train a comin’
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Find Your Social Media ROI
I hear it from a lot of business owners: “Where is the ROI with all this Social Media?“ If this is a question you ask yourself, maybe we should work together a bit more. We can work together solo, or via a professional learning community. Find and increase your ROI. There is a “there” there.
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