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Today, it’s crucial to be visible to customers and prospects on the Web. Most small businesses know this, which is why it’s more than a good idea to be aware of what people are saying and what could be the next success story or miserable failure for your brand. Until recently, the only way to monitor a brand was to perform extensive, repeated searches and to make the round to all the communities and destinations on the Web to see what people are saying about you or your business.

But, that isn’t a smart way to spend your time on the Web or on your business. As entrepreneurs, you’ve got bigger and better things to worry about, which is why brand monitoring applications have been created - especially with focus on social media. In this entry, I go into the pros, cons and give you the bottom line in picking a social media monitoring solution.

For every paid social media brand monitoring application out there, there’s an equal or similar free one. Trust me, paid applications are well worth their price because they deliver neatly packaged results for later interpretation and even do some of the more intelligent “decision-making” in the tone and sentiment of what people say about your brand. This is why larger companies like Comcast, Pepsi or Ford use premium brand monitoring solutions - they scale much better than free applications.

As a small business you don’t need to necessarily concern yourself with premium brand monitoring solutions until it becomes too overwhelming. I recommend to fully exhaust your efforts with free applications before moving up to longer-term solutions.

I want to provide the pros and cons of five popular social media brand monitoring applications and cater my advice toward the entrepreneur and small business owner who doesn’t have a bunch of time to sift through results.

Google Alerts

http://www.google.com/alerts

Google is well known for being the leading search engine and their Alerts service has become popular for anyone to monitor virtually anything. Brand monitoring on Google Alerts effortlessly allows anyone to setup alerts like search terms and they can be delivered via e-mail or RSS.

Pros: Google Alerts is the “realistic” pulse on what is available in their indexes. Google usually indexes new content in minutes and may have new results highly ranked. Because of this, keeping an eye on what Google discovers is a valuable asset. Their e-mail subscriptions are clean and simple, so quick reading can take place whether you’re on the computer or more conveniently on an iPhone or Blackberry. The RSS features are nearly as simple to setup, given that you have an understanding of how RSS delivery works.

Cons: It’s very easy to get lost when searching vague terms like “Small Business” and can deliver an intimidating list of results without any measurement around the accuracy or real-world impact of their results. Despite Google’s anti-spam efforts, a few junk results will slip in, but it’s good to be aware if someone is stealing content. For novice Alerts users, managing Alerts has a learning curve despite how simple they are. A natural effect of using Google Alerts is complacency - the unwillingness to investigate otherwise legitimate results because of the less detailed result listings; they can be a real turn off if you have an immediate email on your brand every day.

Bottom Line: It would be ignorant of a small business not subscribe to Google Alerts, at least on a weekly digest option on their brand. Google Alerts provide value that no other social media services provide - on-demand notices to whatever breaks on the Web about your brand. That said, don’t spend too long when you configure your Alerts service.

SocialMention

http://www.socialmention.com/

SocialMention has grown to be a viable solution for deep brand monitoring across multiple platforms - blogs, microblogs, social bookmarks, blog comments, planned events, images, news references, multimedia and even Q&A services. The service is simply a search engine with some integrated analytics as to the frequency and credibility of the results and gives the user the ability to search in any one platform at a time to assist in reviewing the results.

Pros: SocialMention is powerful because it requires no registration and is unquestionably the easiest to use. As a user, you can enter your search term and it does the rest. The impressive sidebar helps give meaning to the mentions of your brand without having any experience in social media. The RSS capabilities are very useful, no doubt about that, and can deliver a meaty plate of results (if you choose the All search).

Cons: As much of a benefit of no registration is, it’s an certainly an opportunity for SocialMention. I would love to have the ability to set preferences, adjust the squelch of noisy sources (Twitter, for example) and to manage the optimal delivery of the results. Sometimes the results are a bit slow to render, but that’s understandable with the quantity of results. The sentiment scoring is not very accurate, but it gives you an idea on how your brand is being discussed on the Web.

Bottom Line: SocialMention is a valuable free brand monitoring application that will keep you engaged into the buzz of your brand. Due to the performance of the site and the sheer number of results, it may be preferred to use the RSS feed option and go from there. The daily email alerts are not very timely, but are a nice addition to have daily to recap the activity of yesterday. I find the organization features (tabbed search) to be a strong benefit to use it, since you can narrow down the types of discussions people are having.

‘Spy’ (AppSpot)

http://spy.appspot.com/

Spy is a visually appealing, live result feed of brand discussions on the Web. It includes FriendFeed, Twitter, Flickr, BackType, Yahoo News results. While not necessarily the best of research applications for brands, it displays results in an optional full-screen mode in either dark or light colored themes. This service doesn’t require any registration and is very simple to use.

Pros: Spy is sweet because it can easily make for live displays of the discussion at events, in the office or as a separate window to leave open on your computer. It auto-updates the results (most of the time) and includes the newest results instantly. If you’re looking for a simple, executive view of the streams of discussion on microblogs, Spy is a great app to keep in your arsenal.

Cons: Occasionally, the display no longer fetches new results; I imagine this is a way to prevent someone from simply abandoning the site while it uses resources pulling data between the social media services. Not too many features, but that can also be a plus if you’re looking for simplicity.

Bottom Line: Spy is a great tool to use when attending conferences (events) or if you want to get right into seeing what people are saying without meddling with the other sources on the Web. It’s sleek, simple and is addictive to watch.

Honorable Mentions

Not everyone needs comprehensive social media monitoring suites. In honor of great social media buzz tracking applications, I would like to mention them so you can check them out and see if they meet your needs. I would recommend trying out:

• TweetDeck — Great third-party Twitter application boasting solid support for grouping, URL shortening services, Facebook updates and TwitPic integration.
• BackType — Get behind the blogs and follow people’s comments on blogs. In addition, you can establish your brand when it comes to claiming official comments from you.
• BackTweets — Made from the same people who built BackType, this application allows you to track the discussion involving a link (or domain) of yours. Automatically tracks multiple URL shortening services.
• Google Reader — My most recommended RSS reader, that helps you organize and share news items of interest. Google also sees what stories you like and offers additional related feeds for complete enjoyment.

Strategy

When using brand monitoring services it’s a good idea to know how to handle the results. Not every spider can catch all messages everyone is saying. Not every service shows all results equally and not every person will be necessarily read every result. Assessing the individual results for credibility and exposure in an objective view will help you breeze through social media monitoring.

It’s my recommendation that you become comfortable with common phrases, etiquette, and dynamics in social media to fully understand what the results mean. These free applications are unique in how they are used, setup and maintained.

This is where premium social media monitoring services such as Radian6 or Scout Labs lend a hand; they typically offer services with implementation experts or guided setup who can lead you (or your staff) into monitoring your brand and industry for the long-term.

When monitoring your brand, you’ll probably bask in the flood of results that are supportive of your brand. Don’t get too comfortable - there’s usually a small set of people who very much dislike your brand and could place it at risk. The guiding rule of thumb is not to take the offending result personally and to be calm and rational in addressing it.

In spite of all the tools, it never hurts to perform regular searches once a month on your brand by hand. Seeing is believing and discovering how visible (or not) your brand is will aid you in building your small business’s brand so your it’s at the top when people search for it.

I hope this thorough comparison between three free apps for social media monitoring (for small business) helps you choose how and what you monitor your brand. There are plenty of additional services available, which ones are your favorites?

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