What are people saying about you on Twitter?

I've been speaking with a lot of people who are wanting to learn more about how to monitor their online brand on Twitter. Since Twitter has become a place to get real-time news about anything, brands or company mentions have been important to monitor in order to provide the best customer service or response to people.

Companies like Starbucks, Comcast, and Zappos have been really utilizing this to respond to customer service issues, asking for ideas, etc.  As a Twitter user, teacher, or business owner, I think it's important to do the same. I'd like to share some tools I've used to help monitor onlie brands on Twitter.

1. Tweetdeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com)
This is probably my favorite Twitter application since it does so much. You're able to send updates from it, group people you are following, monitor who has replied (@) or direct messaged (DM) you, and also see who is talking about you. There are more features available like monitoring your friends Facebook statuses, but that's another article.

Another reason why this is such a great tool is because it's quite customizable for each user since you're able to set up your groups and searches you want to monitor. I highly recommend using this application, but it does slow down your computer a little.

2. Search on Twitter (http://search.twitter.com)
Now, if you don't want to use Tweetdeck to monitor what people are saying about you 24/7, you're able to do this on Twitter's search. It's a search engine for what people are saying on Twitter. Here are some examples of what you search for:

• guitar classes - any combination of "guitar" and "classes"
• "art teacher" - any time someone specifically mentions "art teacher"
• yoga near:"seattle, wa" - yoga being said in Seattle, WA

Using these searches, your able to either see them immediately on the site or get an RSS Feed for the results so when more people tweet about that specific search query -- you'll be able to see it.

3. Backtweets (http://www.backtweets.com)
This tool is probably one of my favorite tools because you can find people who are talking about your website without having them say your website. You've probably seen these URL shorteners that re-direct to different website on tweets:

• http://tinyurl.com/dayre8
• http://bit.ly/MG22
• http://tr.im/ilOD

These URLs all point to "teachstreet.com", but you wouldn't know that since they are all using re-directing e-mails. This is where Backtweets comes in. It helps you discover more people talking about you that both Tweetdeck and Twitter Search doesn't cover.

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If you're looking to learn more about these applications along with other useful applications to help utilize your Twitter account, please check out my Twitter Applications Class.

For more information, find Twitter classes near you.