One crucial point of emphasis in developing any social media platform is to make sure you’re monitoring what’s being posted and talked about regarding your issue, brand, product or organization. I always enjoy dropping by Travel 2.0 both for work purposes and because Mo & Troy provide some great social media insight and tips.   

I’d encourage you to check out a few posts they’ve done about free tools to monitor online buzz:  Free ways to track web presence,  Even more free ways to track online buzz, Even more, more free ways to track online buzz.  

Each of these posts highlight some excellent monitoring tools. A few that I’ve been checking out more frequently have been Google Trends (to analyze key search terms over periods of time), BoardTracker.com (good tool to see what conversations are tracking on message boards),  BlogPulse (help track blogging keyword trends).

Hop around and check some of these tools out. Remember, the best part is that these tools are FREE and serve as a great way to monitor the social media landscape before moving on setting up a social media strategy (more on that later).

Cheers,
Scott