How to Create a Listening Dashboard
How do you stay up-to-date online? There are so many blogs, news sources, and conversations happening at the same time, every day. The chance that you’ll be able to find them all without trying is pretty unlikely. Think of all the places your company’s name, your employees, projects, or programs could come up in the news, in campaigns, or in online conversations.
Listening on the web is just like listening in the real world. In day to day life we listen for mentions of our name, topics we’re interested in, hobbies we participate in, our company or industry, and friends or family. By listening for these things we give ourselves the opportunity to take action. We can respond, participate in a conversation, build relationships with others, debunk a rumor or correct misinformation, help someone out, and much more.
To stay on top of it all, I suggest you create a listening dashboard - and here’s how to do it.
Determine What You Want To ‘Listen’ To. For example: mentions of you or your organization, special events you’re running, causes you support, competition or others in your industry, or products you sell.
Pick a Listening Tool. Netvibes.com or Google Reader are popular choices. Both are free web-based applications.
Find Your Feeds. The following sites should be at the core of all your listening. You can always add more, but these are a great start:
www.search.twitter.com
www.socialmention.com
http://blogsearch.google.com
http://technorati.com/search
http://digg.com/search
www.youtube.com
www.flickr.com
Each of the above websites will let you search for a word or phrase and then save the RSS feed for that search. In other words, you’re going to subscribe to these websites with your specific search terms. (RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication.) For example, I go to www.search.twitter.com and perform a search for the phrase “re/max results”. When the search results page displays, I can either click the RSS button to subscribe to this search or I can copy the URL of the search results page and paste it into my Listening Tool (Google Reader, for example).
Adding Your Feeds to Your Listening Tool.
Netvibes.com
1. Copy the full URL of the feed you’d like to add
2. Go to your Netvibes page, and hit the green “Add content” button in the upper left of the screen
3. Select “Add a feed” and paste in the URL
4. Click the [Add feed] button
5. When it shows you the FEED preview, click “add” and it will appear in a box below
Google reader
1. Copy the full URL of the feed you’d like to add
2. Go to your Google reader page and click the [Add a subscription] button
3. Paste in the URL and click [Add]
4. You’ll see a list of your subscriptions at the bottom left side of your page
Start Listening. With your listening dashboard in place you can start monitoring what’s being said about you, your company, and your interests. You can add to it any time you find another blog or item to follow, just follow the same steps as above!
Thank you to the following sources of information used for this blog: Risdall Marketing Group “Adapt or DIE”, nten.org, netsquared.com, netvibes.com, and Google reader.
For assistance with establishing your listening board, contact brenda.tushaus@results.net.