Settle on a favorite tool and then let info & updates come to you!

Target audience: Small to mid-size nonprofits, cause organizations, agencies, brands, NGOs, Web publishers, individuals. This is part of our series on social media monitoring:
• Guide to monitoring social media conversations
• 20 free, awesome social media monitoring tools
• 10 paid social media monitoring services for nonprofits

Last year a study of the 200 largest U.S. nonprofits and found that they’re using social media at a faster clip than the business community or academia for the third year in a row. Some 8 percent more charities are monitoring social media over the previous year’s figures. (See the 10-page findings from UMass Dartmouth — PDF.)

But how deep-seated are their efforts? Setting up a Google Alert does not mean you have a monitoring program. And 79 percent in another survey said they hadn’t found ways to incorporate social media tools effectively into their operation, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

During the series of social media bootcamps and presentations that the Socialbrite team has been conducting around the country, one of the most popular how-to’s has been our instructional on how to set up a free monitoring dashboard — or listening station, if you prefer that term.

There are a few things to consider before starting. First, how does a monitoring dashboard fit into your overall communications strategy? Let’s review:

• You should have an overall Social Media Plan that outlines your organization’s end goals and who’s responsible for what deliverables. (Never start with the tools.)
• You should have a Social Media Policy in place.
• You should settle on one of these social media dashboard tools to manage most of your social media activities.
• Supplement that with a select few free monitoring tools, plus perhaps a paid service or vendor if you have the budget.
• Finally, don’t forget a monitoring dashboard to keep on top of everything else. Some paid services incorporate this component, but today we’ll discuss the free variety.

Why do you need a monitoring dashboard in addition to your social media dashboard? Because the free monitoring tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck will plug you into conversations taking place on Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, but won’t connect you with blog posts, comments, forums or search results. (The paid social media dashboard services are beginning to pull all this into one place.) A monitoring dashboard is the place where you’ll be able to gather and organize all your favorite RSS feeds in one place. For instance, you’ll be able to see headlines from dozens of the most important blogs in your sector at a glance. And you’ll be able to see alerts, search results, new photos and even tweets in your dashboard.

In this tutorial we’ll look at two things: How to build your dashboard, and then how to manage it.

How to set up your monitoring dashboard

First, select a favorite news reader. We like Google Reader, but Bloglines, Feedly, iGoogle or other news readers will also do. Some folks prefer Netvibes, which pre-populates your dashboard with top feeds from the sector, like this High-tech news dashboard. (Click on the image at top to download a one-page handout that takes you through the steps for either Google Reader or Netvibes.)

Here’s all it takes to set up a dashboard in Google Reader to monitor your brand:

Step 1: Go to Gmail.com and register for a Google Mail account, if you don’t have one.

Step 2: Go to google.com/reader and log in with your Gmail address.

Step 3: Begin searching for key terms on Google Blog Search, Technorati, BlogPulse or Twitter Search to identify the searches that you want to automate.

We recommend tracking the following:

• Your name
• Company name
• Brand mentions (specific programs, products or services)
• Upcoming events or conferences
• Competitors’ names
• Key phrases in your sector (hunger relief) or industry (cloud computing)

Place the name of the desired search term (use quotemarks for “two or more words”) into Google Blog Search and do the search. On the search results page, click the RSS link in the left sidebar and you should see an “Add to Google Reader” button.

Select it and your search will be added to your dashboard. (Alternatively, if you have Google Reader open on another tab in your Web browser, you can right-click on the page’s RSS link, select Copy Link Location, navigate to your Google Reader tab, click Add a subscription, and paste the link in there.)

Let’s say you created a feed for “homelessness” through Google Blog Search. Whenever Google finds a new reference to your search term on a new blog post, it will automatically appear in your RSS reader. You’ll want to repeat this process for every term you want to monitor.

Step 4: Now let’s have some fun! Go to Twitter search and subscribe to additional terms, either by clicking the feed for this query link in the right sidebar (pictured here):

or by selecting the RSS icon at the right of the Firefox browser’s main search field (pictured here):

We recommend that you subscribe to certain hashtags that apply to your sector, like #malaria; here’s how the RSS feed looks: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23malaria. For inspiration, see our directory of 40 hashtags for social good.

In addition, there may be occasions where you want to conduct an Advanced Search on Twitter, such as tweets from a particular person or organization; tweets since a certain date; tweets near a geographical location; tweets in another language, etc. You can subscribe to any of these searches.

You may also want to go to Google Alerts and have your alerts show up in your monitoring dashboard rather than in your email in-box.

Google Reader also offers a few other goodies, like the ability to share articles with others privately or publicly, although this is somewhat cumbersome. Amy Sample Ward uses Netvibes to publicly share some of the feeds she subscribes to.

Manage your monitoring dashboard: 5 steps to success

Now that you’re up and running, you’ll want to be strategic about what to monitor and who’s doing the monitoring. Are you the lone-wolf social media point person, or do you have several team members charged with keeping a finger on the community pulse? Either way, follow these five steps to success:

1Create checklists. Begin by reviewing the Community Insights Checklist (covering broad goals) and the Keywords Checklist (identifying specific key terms) in our Guide to monitoring social media conversations — and create checklists tailored to your organization.

2Organize your feeds and alerts.Next, organize your dashboard so that you’re targeting the right blogs, alert terms, search terms, Twitter hashtags, etc. Add new feeds to monitor to your Google Reader. Group your feeds into separate folders. Select the Feed settings tab at the top of Google Reader, select New folder, and you’re on your way.

3Be selective. What to do with all the information that starts to pour in? Don’t stress about keeping on top of everything — you’re checking the pulse of the community, not trying to micro-manage every conversation. Be selective in the conversions you join and in the information you pass along to co-workers.

4Start engaging. We recommend interacting with and engaging the most influential individuals (bloggers, Twitterers and commenters) in your network, as long as you’re providing genuine value. Do, however, respond to anyone who interacts with you.

5Act on key learnings. The point of monitoring is not to gather but to disseminate — to act on the information that’s most meaningful. That means not just tweeting but fashioning regular reports, updates and takeaways about what the community is saying and feeding it into the right channels: communications/marketing, program development, the website UI/design team and your organization’s equivalent of customer support, market research and campaign measurement. Create a regular feedback loop that funnels community insights into all areas of your organization.

This is only one way to build and manage a monitoring dashboard. What has worked for you? Please share in the comments!

Related

• Free handouts on social media (Socialbrite)
• Guide to monitoring social media conversations (Socialbrite)
• 20 free, awesome social media monitoring tools (Socialbrite)
• 10 paid social media monitoring services for nonprofits (Socialbrite)
• More monitoring articles (Socialbrite)
• Metrics articles (Socialbrite)

The post How to build & manage a monitoring dashboard appeared first on Socialbrite.

How to manage the torrent of social media conversations — and increase your productivity!

By Kim Bale
Socialbrite staff

One of the things we often hear from nonprofits and social enterprises is: How do I manage the torrent of social media conversations coming at me?

The answer used to be: Painstakingly and one conversation at a time. But a new crop of social media tools aims to tamp down the social media gusher by letting you update, monitor, manage and maintain several communication outlets at once. (While it’s sometimes hard to know what counts as a social media dashboard, we’re not including a wide range of customer relationship management (CRM) or social media monitoring tools here.)

When selecting a dashboard for personal or professional use, you should consider such items as cost, analytics and which social networks they support, among other things. Our list is meant to feature some of the breakout social media dashboards in the space and highlight their distinguishing features to make the selection process a bit easier.

Here are 10 of our favorite social media dashboard tools:

Threadsy: Unify your email, social networks

1Threadsy is an intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard that allows organizations to connect through multiple email accounts as well as Facebook and Twitter. Free to use, Threadsy is great for managing your nonprofit or business’s brand from one clean dashboard across the big names in social media platforms. With no fees and no downloads, this service should make a splash in the space for both personal use and use by your organization.

Myweboo: Organize your information streams

2Haven’t heard of Myweboo? That’s OK. This upstart startup invites users to discover, browse and read popular streams and share them with friends and followers. You or your organization can choose from a wide variety of “applications” to connect to and stream to a dashboard from categories like news, social, fashion, photo and video. These streams can be viewed together of filtered from “My Dashboard” and then easily shared via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Delicious and other networks. You’re in complete control of which sites will make up your dashboard. Free to use, Myweboo is run by an appealing brother-and-sister pair of young tech stars.

Hootsuite: Integrate all your platforms

3Our personal favorite is Hootsuite because of the depth of its products and services. Nonprofits and cause organizations can update multiple social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook and more) from a computer or iPhone, Android or BlackBerry device. A team of users can track results of their interactions and create a dashboard that will work efficiently with their preferred social streams. Hootsuite offers two versions. One is free and aggregates up to five social network and two RSS feeds; it stores stat history for 30 days and is ad supported. For $5.99 a month, your organization can enjoy unlimited capabilities for a single user, with each additional user costing $10 per month.

Spredfast: For teams of social marketers

4Spredfast allows an organization not only to manage its social media presence but also to monitor and measure its voice across multiple social media channels from one easy-to-use dashboard. A great choice for organizations with multiple hands in social media marketing efforts, Spredfast offers superb organizational tools that help identify and assign tasks to multiple users across multiple social media sites ranging from Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn and blogging platforms. It also lets you publish video to many video sites at once, similar to TubeMogul. Free for 30 days, Spredfast has pricing tiers that start around $212 per month for nonprofits. See the new writeup on Spredfast on our sister site, Socialmedia.biz.

MediaFunnel: Collaborative, permission-based system

5Coordinate and manage your nonprofit’s social media presence with MediaFunnel, a collaboration platform that lets you navigate and moderate online conversations about your brand. One interesting feature: You can use MediaFunnel to manage your team member’s social media updates — say, by holding your intern’s tweets in a queue until approved by a supervisor (roles include admins, publishers and contributors). Chiefly geared to businesses, MediaFunnel makes it easy to combine several social media accounts and to offer solutions for presenting a brand’s presence through multiple voices. Scheduled tweets, brand alerts and tweets via email or SMS are supported.

CoTweet: Advanced features for Enterprise users

6CoTweet is used by thousands of individuals and employees at nonprofits and corporations around the world. The free Standard edition is limited to a few Twitter accounts and geared to a couple of team members. The paid Enterprise edition supports Facebook, too, and is geared to brands more deeply engaged in social marketing, brand building and customer support. It supports an unlimited number of users, advanced workflow, more analytics, third-party integrations — including Salesforce.com — productivity tools, unlimited conversation history for deeper customer relationships, a mobile app, rich profiles of fans and followers and more.

Seesmic: Free, clean & credible

7Seesmic allows users to manage unlimited Twitter accounts as well as Facebook, Google Buzz, LinkedIn and Foursquare accounts. Another free service, this dashboard is well-organized and can be sorted into a variety of timelines detailing tweets, retweets, @mentions, direct messages and lists. Seesmic also publishes trending topics, making it easy to join already popular conversations. This dashboard — created by Loic Le Meur, founder of LeWeb, and his San Francisco-based team — is clean, simple and affords the ability to update several statuses, send direct messages and check in to locations from one easily navigated page.

Netvibes: Share your widgets with the world

8Netvibes lets organizations keep track of the news and trends that matter, create unique personal and public dashboards and share these public dashboards or sites with anyone, anywhere, at any time. You can easily create fun and personalized widgets — detailing the weather, to-do lists, Twitter feeds, Facebook posts or Flickr updates, among many others — and post them to both personal and public dashboards. Organizations can choose a theme, name their pages and organize them with tabs and share them with the world.

TweetDeck: Connect with your contacts

9If you’re a Twitter aficionado, you may already use TweetDeck, which works on the Mac, PC, Linux, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android. It connects organizations with contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and many more. Free of charge, TweetDeck allows users to schedule future posts, manage multiple accounts and update several social media sites at once to maintain consistency. One unique feature allows users to send tweets longer than 140 characters through smart cross-posting to both a Buzz and Twitter account. Twitter is a desktop app and not Web-based, so one thing we don’t like is the inability to manage the app’s font size on different screens.

Brizzly: Simplify your updating

10Brizzly simplifies your social media browsing and updating experience while taking some of the work out of keeping up to date with trends and followers. It lets you update on Twitter and Facebook. Its Brizzly Guide helps explain trending topics on Twitter. Brizzly is free.

Tools that can integrate your social networks

There are, of course, other social media dashboard solutions for the enterprise. One good choice for businesses is Awareness, which lets your team publish, manage, measure and engage across multiple social media channels.

Another is Sprout Social: Social media tools for business, a social media management suite. We listed Sprout Social in our roundup of Paid social media monitoring services.

Also, don’t forget other tools that can integrate your social networks:

• You might want to try using a browser as your social media dashboard. Flock has been the most social of the social browsers for the past five years. Others say Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox will get you a social media dashboard with the right add-ons/extensions. And Marc Andreessen’s upcoming RockMelt (Mashable review) will take it a step further, requiring you to log into Facebook before using it.

• Unilyzer has a social media dashboard to unify your Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts.

• We’re impressed by the private beta of Nimble and will report back when we’ve used it more extensively.

• TwitterFeed lets you feed your blog to Twitter, Facebook and more.

• Ping.fm is a free service that makes it easy to update your social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and Delicious.

• RowFeeder is a tool to cross-post, to track conversations on Twitter and Facebook and to create analytical reports.

What’s your favorite social media dashboard? Please add a comment.

Related articles

• Spredfast: A tool to organize your conversations (socialmedia.biz)
• HootSuite Adds Facebook Analytics to Its Social Media Dashboard [TNW Canada] (thenextweb.com)
• 7 + Social Media Cross Platform Branding Tools (verticalmeasures.com)
• What is HootSuite and How to Use it for Your Small Business (techtalkformoms.com)

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