Today I had the opportunity to give a crash course in social media to a group of publishing colleagues at Wiley’s European headquarters. The talk was only an hour, so we covered a lot of ground quickly with hopes that everyone could pick up at least one tool they could put to use right away. If social media is like drinking from a firehose, we all got a little wet today.
Many if not most of the attendees were involved in some sort of social media activity, either personally or professionally. Almost everyone was using Facebook to some degree, less using Twitter, and a lone MySpace user.
Like most, the challenge of everyone in the room was in filtering the noise in order to find opportunities where they could provide value. My goal today was to provide a collection of tools that might be used to set up a Social Media Listening Post – a place where all the signal can be collected and where one might find opportunities for conversation.
The group asked a lot of very smart questions, and as a result we bounced around quite a bit from tool to tool, as everyone contributed ways in which they found certain sites or tools useful. I admit I rediscovered a forgotten tool while answering a question, so I came away with something new again as well.
Among the tools we covered were:
- Ning
- Twitterfall
- Google Reader
- Google Alerts
- Google Blog Search
- Social Media Firehose
- Backtype
- Social Mention
- Board Reader
- Feed My Inbox
- Twimailer
- Tweetdeck
- Twhirl
- Firefox
- Google Chrome
What other tools do you use when filtering social media? How did you develop your social media listening post?
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