Merle’s Mission Ezine- Jan 31, 2010

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                         Merle's Mission Ezine                       
                 "The Best of the Net Straight to Your Door"   

                       
http://www.MerlesWorld.com
Issue #10  ISSN: #1527-3105                   Jan 31, 2010

"Published Since 2002"

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Merle, Publisher/Editor                      Merle@MerlesWorld.com

My Blog: http://Merlesworld.Blogspot.com/

Follow Me on Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/msmerle

My Social Networks: http://www.retaggr.com/Card/merle
http://www.MerlesWorld.com

DONATIONS Wanted: If you enjoy this ezine, please make a donation
by PayPal http://tinyurl.com/3gzpa -Your small gifts will help
support my website and this newsletter and buy bones for "my kids".
Yes, the four legged kind.<grin>

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IN THIS ISSUE
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=> 1. Editorial- Wisdom from Merle

=> 2. Feature Article-"Are Your Ears Burning?- 20 Tools
                       for Tracking Social Media Marketing"

=> 3. Webmaster Resources

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1) EDITORIAL from Merle
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Hi Kids,

Oh baby, it's cold outside....Brrrrrrrrrrrr..No matter what I
do I can't get warm today.  I stepped outside to go run some
errands and thought I walked into a freezer instead. At least
it's not snowing.  The only thing winter makes me want to do
is hibernate....now where's my blanket.(grin)

Have you heard the song "Pants on the Ground"? If you don't
know the story behind it it was performed for American Idol
tryouts by a 62 year old man.He didn't make the cut but his
song did go viral on YouTube. If you missed all the fun you
can find it posted on this blog below. I get a kick out of it
every time I watch it.

Don't look now but it's almost Valentine's Day so if you have
a honey might want to start getting that gift together. My
fav is chocolate so send away. See you next time.

Merle
Editor/Publisher
http://MerlesWorld.com
http://MerlesMission.com

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"Are Your Ears Burning?- 20 Tools for Tracking Social Media Marketing"

By Merle http://MerlesWorld.com

Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter make
it easy for people to come together and share opinions,
experiences and thoughts on a number of topics. Smart
companies understand this and are using the power of
social media to connect and inform their customers,
and potential customers. Referred to as "Social Media
Marketing", it's a smart way to open the lines of
communication between you and your prospects.

Social media activities run the gamut from Blogging,
micro blogging sites such as Twitter, social networking
communities such as LinkedIn and Facebook, video and
music uploading sites, discussion forums, photo sharing
and more. With so many different sites and ways to
participate, it can be difficult to keep track of all
your efforts.

Participating in social media doesn't take a lot
of money, but it is very time consuming and businesses
want to know that all of this investment in time is
paying off. Before launching a campaign, you should
have a firm grasp on what it is you're trying to
accomplish. Is it increasing website traffic? Getting
more ezine subscribers? Having more people download
your free ebook or whitepaper? Or maybe you just want
to work on your company's brand image. Whatever it is,
you need to have a plan. As the old saying goes, "If
you don't know where you're going, you'll never get
there”. Have your game plan intact before getting
started in marketing yourself, or your company with
social media.

There are many different forms of social media,
so it's impossible to use them all. Pick three
or four, and funnel the majority of your efforts
there. Even if you won't be working them all,
at the very least you should claim your name
or company name on as many social services as
possible. You don't want to find out later that
someone has the user name that you want. If
you need to see if your chosen user name is
available try http://Namechk.com which checks
dozens of social media networking and bookmarking
sites all at once to see if it's available.
Claim your name now so you won't end up
being sorry later.

So how do you monitor all the buzz? How do
you monitor your brand and protect your hard
earned reputation? I thought you'd never ask.
There isn't one fool-proof method but there
are many services and tools out there that
will make it easy to see who's talking about
you online. Some are free and others will make
you pull out your wallet.

These "online reputation management" tools, as they're
often referred to, will help you to  define keywords,
or phrases you wish to track and then watches for any
mention of your company name, products, or services.
It's important to defend and monitor your online
reputation. Similar to High School reputations,
protecting your image online is the name of the game,
and just as in real life, everyone has one to
maintain.

Let's take a look at some of the measuring and
tracking tools at your disposal:

1)http://BackTweets.com : A search engine for
Twitter. See who's tweeting your links and
more. Can also sign up for email alerts of
new findings.

2) http://Addictomatic.com : A little different
than the others , you type in a keyword, topic
or phrase and out it goes searching the top
blogs, news sites, Google, Technorati, Ask,
YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Topix and more. You'll
be given a personalized results page to
bookmark with everything it finds related to
your topic.

3) http://Buzzoo.net : All about Internet buzz,
it tracks several different websites to bring
you what's "hot" right now.

4) http://Surchur.com : Search for the latest
and greatest on topics that are popular right
now. Type in a keyphrase and it searches blogs,
social news sites, photo and video sites for
your chosen topic.

5) http://Commentful.Blogflux.com : This service
watches for comments on blog posts, Digg, Flickr,
and others and notifies you of any findings.

6) http://AlertRank.com : A better way to organize
and sort Google alerts. Get a daily report
emailed to you in a spreadsheet format of what
it finds.

7) http://BoardTracker.com : A search engine
for forums only. Monitor discussion boards
and be notified by email when a thread matching
your search terms is discovered. Free to use.

8) http://www.google.com/alerts : I've been
using this "secret weapon" for years. Simply
type in your name or company name and receive
daily emails of results found. They do the
work, you receive the links. Free and nice.

9) http://BrandsEye.com : An online reputation
management tool with a real-time, concise overview
of your online reputation. Multiple levels of
services and pricing available. Starting at $1.00.

10) http://Twazzup.com : Another Twitter only
search engine.

11) http://SiteMention.com : Type in your url
and find out what's being said about you. The
results returned are gathered from Google Blog
Search, Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube, MySpace,
Digg, Delicious and many more.

12) http://Brandwatch.net: This service tracks
your brands, companies, even the competition.
Sign up for free weekly updates on any brand.
Their detailed reports break down what sites
like you, your most talked about features,
weekly summary of all blogs and forum activity.
Very similar to the old "press clipping" service.

13) http://Trackur.com : A tool that scans
many websites including blogs, news, image and
video sites, forums and notifies you of any
mention of your brand, products/services.
Easy to use and affordable. Prices vary
depending on need, a personal account is
only $18.00 a month, corporate account $88.00
a month with other options also available.
Try a "personal" account free for 14 days.

14) http://FiltrBox.com : This one searches
online news sources, Twitter and others to
find out what's being said about you or your
company. Pricing is based on the number of
users, but there is a free version that
provides "5 filters" and 15 days of what they
call "article history".

15) http://SocialMention.com/alerts : Just
like Google Alerts but for social media. Enter
your keyword phrase and email address to be
notified of any new findings. Searches blogs,
microblogs like Twitter, bookmarks, comments,
events, images, news, videos and more.

16) http://BlogPulse.com : A search engine
that searches only for data posted to blogs.
Enter your keyword, hit submit and off it
goes to gather results.

17) http://BackType.com : Billing itself
as a "conversational search engine" they
index millions of conversations from social
networks, blogs and other social media.

18) http://sm2.techrigy.com : Industry insiders
claim this to be the leading social media
monitoring solution online. Choice of free
or paid version. Free is limited to five
searches and 1,000 results. There are three
paid professional levels: Gold, Diamond, or
Platinum.

19) http://ReputationDefender.com : This paid
service finds out everything there is to know
about you online, and if negative information
is found they try to have it removed. Different
types of plans are available such as "My
Reputation", "My Privacy", starting at only
$14.95 a month.

20) http://Topsy.com : Topsy will track your
tweets that have been retweeted so you can
find out who's been sending you all that
"link love". Type in your Twitter user name
and you'll be amazed at what you find.

If you'd like to track incoming traffic from
your various social media profiles, an easy
way to do it using Google Analytics can be
found here http://Tinyurl.com/kuc9rL

Just as there are many ways to market your company
using social media, as you can see, there's a
multitude of tools and services at your disposal
to track and see if all of that hard work is
paying off. Smart companies realize the
importance of social media in their marketing
efforts and are utilizing it on some level.
How smart are you?

----------------------------------------------

"Blah...Blah...Blog..Rantings by Merle"- The Blog that's
loaded with online marketing techniques and strategies
that will help you increase your website traffic and make
more money online. Tips and tricks for online entrepreneurs,
and marketers to grow your net biz. Visit today-
http://www.mcpromotions.blogspot.com/
Follow me http://Twitter.com/msmerle

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3- WebMaster Resources
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