ILEAD U 2011: Keeping Your Ear to the Intertubes

Tara Caldara

By listening to online conversations you can:

  • Know and understand your community.
  • Keep up to date on current issues.
  • Identify what needs are not being met and how you can meet them.
  • Learn about new technology, best practices and ideas.
  • Discover what other organizations are doing.
  • Develop a network of people and resources that you can turn to in times of need.

Manage your online reputation -- for yourself and your group/organization/project.

  • Do a vanity search. Google yourself!
  • Use variations of your name.
  • Use quotation marks.
  • Try other search engines and applications.
  • Don’t forget to do an image and news search as well.
  • Set up a Google Alert for your name or any topic of importance to you.
  • Correct misinformation when possible.
  • Find out what (if anything) people are saying about you/your organization/your project.
  • Check out social networking aggregators (lookupanyone.com, spokeo.com).
  • Check review sites, such as Yelp!, Google Maps, tripadvisor.

Listen In!

  • Use Twitter to gather information. You don’t have to post. TweetDeck makes monitoring multiple Twitter feeds very easy.
  • Follow your audience to hear what they are saying.
  • Join the conversation when you can offer help.
  • Engage your audience.
  • Follow other groups/organizations to keep current.
  • Sign up for Quora. Login and monitor it. Use it to get to know your audience.

Other Tools:

  • Facebook - Like pages that interest you and be sure to check the updates (under messages). Friend people in your community or potential audience.
  • RSS Feeds: Use an RSS reader (such as Google Reader) to bring the news to you. Outlook has a nice built in RSS feature.
  • Google Alerts: Google will send alerts to your e-mail or Google Reader. Create alerts using variations of you group/project/organization name. Set up a Google Alert for your own name.
  • iGoogle - Set up your customized desktop with updated RSS feeds. You can use Netvibes or Pageflakes as well.
  • Twitter - Use the Search feature periodically to “listen in” or go to Twitter Search.
  • Spezify – a visually-based search engine.
  • Topsy – Use to search the social web.
  • Technorati - Search blogs and posts.
  • Monitorthis - Search 25 different search engines.
  • Browser plug-ins - Use Firefox add-ons or IE add-ons.

Local to You:

  • Be sure to check your local newspapers - often! Set up RSS feeds if you can. Example: Lake County News Sun. RSS feeds for headlines, but often miss Talk of the County and Editorials. Local paper Zion-Benton News does not have a lot of content on the website - they do have an ePaper, which is not searchable on the Internet.