I Like To Watch….
EDITOR UPDATE: There is a new list here Top 20 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools For 2013
When I’m working on a small or pro-bono project I often use one or more of these tools for tracking online brand mentions. You should know that you get what you pay for. Depending on the tool, some are hit or miss.
Free social media listening tools are like the fruit fly of the social media world. They are born, live, and die in short order. With only a few exceptions, their results can be spotty and the tools can stop working at any time. There is a lot of overlap in this list, and for good reason. Your mileage may vary, but you have been forewarned.
If you are implementing a fully committed social media program at your company, then I strongly encourage you to bite the bullet, be a big kid, and pay for a full featured social media monitoring tool. However, if you need a quick and dirty free social media listening tool, here are a few to choose from.
I will publish updated versions of this post in the future. Please leave a comment with your thoughts, suggestions, and feedback for future versions.
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Listening Resources
| Resource | Tracks | RSS Feed |
| Google Alerts | News, Web, Blogs, Microblogs, Images, Video | Yes |
| Social Mention | News, Web, Blogs, Microblogs, Images, Video | Yes |
| Boardtracker | Discussion Boards | Yes |
| Monitor This | News, Web, Blogs, Microblogs, Images, Video | |
| Spy | News, Web, Blogs, Microblogs, Images, Video | Yes |
| Twitter (Advanced Search) | Yes | |
| Icerocket | Blogs, News, Web | Yes |
| Google Video (Advanced Search) | Video | Yes |
| Blogpulse | Blogs | |
| Backtype | Blog Comments | |
| Digg | Digg | Yes |
| Yahoo News | News | Yes |
| Metacafe | Video | Yes |
| Page2RSS | Adds an RSS to a specific web page | Yes |
| Delicious | Delicious | |
| Bing | Web | Yes |
| Wikipedia | Wikipedia | |
| Social Media Firehose (Yahoo Pipes) | This is a powerful social media search for company and brand mentions on a bunch of social media sites, including flickr, YouTube, Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, WordPress, FeedBurner, and more | Yes |
| Conventional and Social Media Tracker (Yahoo Pipes) | Searches multiple blog and social media search engines | Yes |
| Social Site Submission Watch Dog (Yahoo Pipes) | Searches for your URL if it’s submitted to Digg and Reddit | Yes |
Steve Farnsworth's Old Blog 
Ryan Rancatore
March 16, 2010
Nice work, Steve. Great tools for small businesses – or even for individuals looking to keep an eye on what is being said about them “out there”. Definitely worth a bookmark (Delicious of course)
steve_dodd
March 17, 2010
Hey Steve, great and helpful list. Another popular free service for MessageBoards / Forums is http://www.boardreader.com. Might be worth checking out.
EurekaJanet
March 17, 2010
Nice~! Just posted a blog yesterday about the importance of tracking…and how beneficial it can be to your brand…but your list is SUPER.
Thank you~!
Gini Dietrich
March 18, 2010
I have a few to add:
* Pipl
* Board Reader
* Twendz
* Technorati
* Google blog search
* Website grader
* Twitter grader
* Compete
* Site volume
* Popuri
* Social meter
That’s all.
Alice Ratcliffe
April 2, 2010
Wow this list has really helped me. Thanks Steve.
I was wondering what the best way to track when my URL has been linked into a blog post/news article is. Can anyone recommend somewhere that will provide an RSS feed for this?
Daniel
May 31, 2010
Hey Steve,
I also made an entry on free social media moniroting tools. You might be interested:
http://www.social-brand-value.com/2010/05/31/free-social-media-monitoring-tools-list/
Cheers
Daniel
Varinder Kaur
July 21, 2010
Thanks for listing out all the resources. I was looking for social media monitoring tools and this is really helpful.
Gail Clark
July 23, 2010
Ummm lots of useful tools here will keep me buy
Andrew Perepeczko
August 23, 2010
Hi Steve – for your updated list I would add addictomatic (don’t let the name put you off!)- only came across it myself over the weekend and thought it was very cool! Cheers, Andrew (@AndrewPere)
Steve Farnsworth
August 23, 2010
Thanks Andrew! I do know it, and you are not the first to recommend it be on this list. Originally, I didn’t include it becuase it does not have an RSS feed, and I felt that other options on this list covered the same ground. Can you tell me what makes it special to you?
Ada
April 13, 2011
Great list, Steve! I’m a big fan of Google Alerts myself but didn’t realize there were so many tools out there. I noticed you don’t really weigh in on which one is easiest / best to use out of the list. What would you recommend?
Steve Farnsworth
April 14, 2011
Madam, I have responded to your chide that I have not rated these tool. Please see my stinging response here: http://ow.ly/4Awa8 Good day to you! ;-)
Kay Walten
July 27, 2011
Nice list Steve, thank you for sharing.
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