Use MarketMeSuite, Meetup & Foursquare to locate your closest supporters

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, brands, social media managers.

Guest post by Nikki Peters
Community Support Manager, MarketMeSuite

If you have a Twitter account, you’ve likely used Twitter search to locate supporters and other like-minded organizations that are tweeting about topics and causes you care about. While keyword searches can be useful in increasing your audience and even gaining supporters, it’s also hugely time consuming. It becomes quite labor intensive to conduct a local search through Twitter for supporters in your area, and it can be difficult to keep track of replies and streamline your results.

Fortunately, there are other methods and tools for conducting targeted searches. This article will look at how your organization can incorporate geo-targeting so you can not only interact with people who are interested in your cause but also those who are local enough to participate and get involved in person.

Geo-targeting on Twitter with MarketMeSuite

Being able to locate tweets that have been sent within an “X mile radius” really does mean you can restrict your searches to only the most relevant distances and topics for you. Determining the location of tweets is particularly helpful if your nonprofit is holding an event in a town and wants to get locals involved. One method for locating tweets is with the UK-based social media dashboard MarketMeSuite. In addition to having all your social network accounts in one place, MarketMeSuite lets you target your tweet searches to location and specific words using a feature called “Reply Campaigns.”

You can target within 1,000 miles of a specific location. All you have to do is type in either the city, county, zip code or postal code to get the location of your choice. The keyword selection also means you can target the words that you feel will be most used in your niche topic.

Here’s an example of the Reply Campaign feature:

This type of geo-targeted tweeting is a tremendous time saver. For example, if you’re planning a local event and struggling to reach potential participants or sponsors, you can use geo-targeting to create a campaign within a 20-mile radius. As nice as it is to chat with someone who would love to attend but lives in Norway, you still need to fill up your event in New York. The results are pretty staggering: Eighty-five percent of replies sent using this method elicit some kind of reply.

You can further reduce the noise by banning words from your results with the “Negative Keywords” feature. This means you can tailor your search for only positive tweets about your subject choice. Add as many as you like to make sure that you get the best results; you are much more likely to have people respond and participate in your event simply because they are close enough to be interested.

Location services Meetup.com & Foursquare

There are a couple of social networks dedicated to all things local. Meetup.com, now with 9.5 million members, allows you and your nonprofit to set up events and advertise them so other locals can see what’s going on in their town. It’s a hyper-local service that uses meetups, or gatherings, as a way to get people rallying around the same cause. Once you’ve established an event on the site, you can tweet out the links to it, even using it in your replies from your searches so that you never miss a beat in spreading the word about the great work that your organization does.

Another location tool you should take advantage of is Foursquare. With Foursquare, you can put your organization on the map so people can check in whenever they come to an event. Foursquare is often hooked up directly to a person’s Twitter and Facebook account, so you’re getting three times the exposure for the price of one. (And the price is free!)

Why geo-targeting is important for your nonprofit

Although some may think that the quantity of a Twitter search is the most important result, it really isn’t. If the people you are engaging with are not local to you, they might just be too far away to take part even if they wanted to. By searching within a targeted area, you know you are reaching people who will sit up and listen. Connect with folks in your community and entreat them to become your biggest supporters and evangelists!

How have you used geo-targeting in your organization? Or are you ready to begin?

The post Free tools to help geo-target your socialsphere appeared first on Socialbrite.

Tips & tools for tracking what’s being said about your nonprofit

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, brands, bloggers, social media managers, individuals.

This is part of our ongoing series on how organizations can get the most out of Twitter. Please see below for other installments in this series.

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

People are talking about your nonprofit, especially on Twitter. Research shows that one out of three Twitter users talk about brands in their tweets. You don’t have the time to moniter your organization’s Twitter stream all day long, hoping to catch any mentions of your name. Thankfully, it’s easy to keep an eye on your brand. You can save time by setting up the right tools for your Twitter account. Below you’ll find plenty of options for monitoring mentions and tracking keywords so that you can respond to supporters promptly and analyze your results for success.

Twilerts: Twitter alerts via email

1Twilerts is a brand application that enables you to receive regular email alerts of tweets containing your brand, or whatever keyword you want to stay on top of. Think Google Alerts for Twitter. It allows you to track up to 10 queries, using its basic or advanced options, after creating a free account through your Twitter account or through Gmail.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

PeopleBrowsr & Kred: Social analytics for serious marketers

2PeopleBrowsr is a Web-based search engine for real-time conversations. The possibility to search bios and tweets by authority, location and links are among its Twitter features. But this is only the beginning, as this tool provides you with plenty of more options to keep track of your brand. It will even analyze tweets and classify them as positive or negative and track sentiments overtime. PeopleBrowser also offers full social analytics solutions with the ability to monitor Facebook, blogs and forums. With pricing beginning at $149 per month per seat, this is clearly an option for power users who really want to go deep with their tracking. Interestingly, the company announced last month that it’s offering a new service called Kred as a competitor to Klout.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

Sideline: Keep on top of key terms

3Sideline is a free monitoring tool from Yahoo! that lets you specify keywords to keep track of via an attractive downloadable app. It runs on Adobe AIR and is open source (though Yahoo! sticks an odd “all rights reserved” notice at the bottom). Sideline has advanced search features, including auto-refreshing of search queries and scanning trending topics. It also offers an Influencers tool to watch what important people are saying about a topic. Watch a four-minute screencast at Vimeo.

Rating: ★ ★
Platforms: Desktop

SocialMention: Social media search & analysis

4SocialMention lets you search keywords on Twitter; however, it also looks for mentions on 100+ social media properties. Place widgets of tracked searches on your website or create daily email alerts for searches. You can only search for one keyword at a time, although you can set up more than one alert. The dashboard, however, goes beyond only searching for your keyword; it also shows you sentiment, top related words, top users and top hashtags.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

Twitter: Lists and advanced search

5Twitter offers several free tools which can help you keep track of what’s being said of your brand. The ability to create Twitter lists can be hugely helpful if you keep them organized. Third-party apps, such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, make viewing lists easier. With the advanced search options, you can monitor negative impressions, questions and tweets by location.

Rating: ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

Monniter: Live Twitter search

6Monniter is a free real-time Twitter search and monitoring tool. It allows you to narrow your search by geolocation, to set up multiple queries and to see them side by side. Plus, you can pause the monitoring of each column. Saved searches aren’t part of its options since you don’t have to sign up to use it. You can, however, place a keyword-tracking widget on your website.

Rating: ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

SocialOomph: Boost your social media productivity

7SocialOomph will monitor the tweet stream for you and periodically email you a list of messages containing your specified keywords. You get a limited number of keywords with the free version, but it’s more than most other free tools allow. The professional version costs $27.97 per month. Socialbrite uses SocialOomph to auto-follow new followers — despite its awful interface.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

SproutSocial: Social media monitoring

8SproutSocial is an elegantly-designed social media dashboard which also allows for keyword tracking. You can aggregate your searches into one data stream to streamline your searches. It also helps you manage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare and other networks. The Pro version is $9 a month, while the Business version is $49 a month. Only the Pro version gives you the option to narrow keyword searches by location. They do, however, offer a 50 percent discount for nonprofits. Email [email protected] to request your discount.

Rating: ★ ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

TweetBeep: Twitter alerts

9Tweetbeep lets you track conversations with hourly updates or daily emails. To use this service, you have to sign up and confirm by email. It will also track mentions of your website, even if tweets use a URL shortening service. You can set up 10 keyword alerts for free or upgrade to the Premium version for $20 a month, and get up to 200 alerts with a 15-minute alert option.

Rating: ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

TweetAlarm: Keep an eye on Twitter keywords

10TweetAlarm allows you to track as many keywords as you like and gives you notices whenever you want — daily, weekly or as often as they find tweets that match your query. You can also ignore tweets from users of your choice, including from your own account.

Rating: ★ ★
Platforms: Web-based

Top photo via socialmouths.com

In this series on Socialbrite

• 8 nonprofit Twitter superstars
• 12-step guide on how to live-tweet an event
• 24 best practices for nonprofits using Twitter
• 7 top tools to measure performance & influence on Twitter
• Best Twitter dashboards for nonprofits
• 10 great get-down-to-business Twitter apps for nonprofits

The post How to use Twitter to monitor your brand appeared first on Socialbrite.