5 Tools For Social Market Research
August 05 2010 by Greg de Lima ~ 3 Comments
Researching your target market or collecting data on your relative market can never be avoided. Jumping into social media and networking without your background knowledge doesn’t change just because it’s online.
Here are five tools to get your market research done, and well:
Compete
Complete with a site profile and a site compare tool, Compete.com is loaded with Visitor Stats, Top Keywords, and Top Destination Sites. Along with the basic tools the Pro option gives you a much more in-depth look at your site and best of all your competitors.
Compete is excellent at giving you a good overlook at the kind of traffic your website and landing pages are competing with and provide a good benchmark for your expectations. The only problem I have found with Compete, is that sometimes if your website isn’t “popular enough” you won’t appear on their searches. You can fix this by adding their tracking code to your website, with a small sacrifice for load time.
Social Mention
For reporting, measuring share-of-voice, and for a general understanding of the reach and influence of your competitors, Social Mention is an all-in-one aggregator for Micro-Blogging, Blogs, and Social Networks (Provided that the information is public). As an ongoing research tool, this one gives a great (free) way to keep an eye on your networks, reach, and influence without having to browse multiple tools or services.
Be sure to use your Boolean search operators to refine the search, otherwise you might get irrelevant content in the search.
Google Alerts
I personally like to think of Google Alerts as an, “in-your-face” type of Social Mention. Where the previous tool lets you search passively whenever you want or need, Google Alerts lets you get the information sent to you. The catch though, is that unlike social mention which checks each network individually, Google Alerts operates from Google Search results. This tends to weed out some results depending on your SEO. However the benefit of having a constant detailed search result in your inbox is valuable to your time because you’re not spending the individual time to sit around and do it yourself.
Word Tracker
The only Paid tool I’ll feature (there is a 7-day free trial), Word Tracker functions like a high-end Google Keyword Tool, which is an excellent free tool to substitute for Word Tracker. The personalization of Word Tracker over the Google Keyword Tool is that it monitors over-time usage to optimize your SEO and PPC results. The benefit of paying for this tool is that they include much more than just the keywords and obvious tools you can get through free websites.
WeFollow
WeFollow is a Twitter Directory. Plain and simple. By being able to search by city or tag or both, you narrow down searches that help any business build Twitter lists for potential followers. The human aspect here is great, for all the Twitterers that I have found using this tool they are all very “human” users; no spammers, or bots. Spending time here will get you a good point to get a start on your base or to even expand your Twitter network.
Bonus: Twellow
Another Twitter Directory, Twellow is just as expansive if not more than WeFollow. Right on the front page you’re looking at what looks like an online Yellow Pages. Covering every range of expertise or hobby Twellow gives you an extremely quick and productive way to find the best Twitter users for you.
What tools do you use for your research? Leave a comment, let me know!
Image Credit – David Paul Ohmer
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