5 Free Tools For Tracking Topics On Twitter

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Right now I have a particular area of interest and that would be all things related to CRM and Social CRM. I want to keep up with who is talking about these applications and what they are saying and sharing. Another one of my goals is to share this information with others who may have an interest in this same subject matter. There are several free tools that you can deploy, today, that will easily assist you in this task and here are my current fav 5 ….

Twitter – I’ve always been pretty proud of the fact that most of my activity regarding Twitter doesn’t include actually having to go to the site. Certainly, you can do an awful lot using other tools like HootSuite but, Twitter does have it’s place. You can do searches on your subject and save those searches. What for me is more important is the ability to assign my followers to a variety of lists and then view that Twitter stream separately. In so doing, I am also laying the ground work for some of my other tools. This is best accomplished by developing a routine where you assign folks to one or more lists as you follow them. I only follow a little over 1,500 people and going back and doing this is a major chore. It would be close to impossible with 15,000 pr 150,000.

I also take a look at their lists and, if you were not aware of this already, you can follow any user’s list as a new list of your own. Mind you, you are not following these people directly but you are able to watch their stream and then choose to do so individually. You might also take a look at lists that other folks have you on. For example, I have already been added to several lists that are related to CRM and SCRM. Click on that list, go to the user, and then follow that same list. Easy and fast.

Forumulists – This is a pretty cool tool that actually creates lists for you based on a variety of settings and algorithms. One of it’s best features is that you can ask it to find folks who are “like” you or are like people you respect. There are a few people on Twitter who I track pretty religiously. Some might call it “stalk” but I’m not willing to talk about that right now 🙂 At any rate, Formulists goes out and finds tweeple who are most like them and then creates the list which, incidentally, is automatically added to my entire set of Twitter lists.

Listorius – This application is extremely powerful for both finding people on Twitter and also for finding and following lists that have already been created. For my purposes, I entered the keyword “SCRM” and found 1,000’s of users who have listed that as a part of their profile. Yes, listorious is also about you being found. You can enter up to 6 tags for your profile so that you will come up in searches on that particular topic(s).

SocialMention – What is interesting about SocialMention is that it not only creates searches accross Twitter, it also checks a variety of other sources including FaceBook, YouTube, RSS feeds, etc. and then creates a live search update screen on the subject matter. You can even install it as a widget on your website. Like Google Alerts, SocialMention will also generate email alerts to you on a scheduled basis. A very good additional application for this tool would be to use it to track what folks are saying about your brand on social media. Powerful!

Paper.li – I ran across this about a week ago and I am just fascinated by it! Paper.li gives you the ability to create your own newspaper/newsletter based on either all of those folks you follow, somebody’s (not just your own) twitter list, or on a hash tag search. From what I can tell, you can create up to 10 of your own personal newspapers and a new updated version is published every 24 hours. It scans your Twitter stream and grabs articles and images to share on the paper. You can even set it to auto-tweet whenever a new edition comes out (Get your paper! Read all about it!) and when it does so it even Tweets a few of the names of people who are in that edition in a @twitter_user format. Sweet! I am building buzz for me, my subject matter, and the people I follow. Can’t get much better than that! Finally, people who read your paper can also subscribe to it and be alerted of new editions via email. I currently have two papers and here is my latest  that was created from one of my Twitter lists …

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Craig M. Jamieson

Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services
Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!
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