Listen First

Digital Guru and all-around-swell-cat Chris Brogan did a post a while back on the importance and basics of listening online:

Conversations are happening online in all kinds of places. It’s important to understand how to get in there, and how to listen where the conversations are happening. Here’s a very impartial list of places to listen and how. But first, a word about Google Reader.

Google Reader is a tool that makes reading LOTS of blogs and other RSS feeds really easy. (Did I lose any of you on discussing RSS? If so, watch this and come back.) How? First, it’s super easy to add subscriptions. Click the big green “ADD SUBSCRIPTION” button and you can add whatever you need to follow. Now, let’s talk about what to add.

Where to Listen

• Technorati. Get an account there, then build a watchlist. Click the watchlist button and put in relevant search terms to find what you need to track. For instance, for my ego surf, I track: “chris brogan,” “chrisbrogan,” “chrisbrogan.com” and more. Then, click the posts tab, find the orange RSS graphic and the Subscribe text, and right-click (or CTRL-click for Mac users) and copy link location. Take this and go back to Google Reader and add the subscription. (Um, not chrisbrogan, but whatever search terms YOU want to track.) Do this for each search term until you’ve got them fairly covered.
• Google Blog Search. Similar plan here. Go to the site http://blogsearch.google.com, type in your search terms, and then note the left sidebar where you can subscribe. Copy the link location for RSS, and dump THAT into your Google Reader’s subscriptions. (Note: I have a folder entitled “ME” where all my ego surfing goes. Reader shows you how to add tags or make folders.)
• Twitter. With Twitter’s new Track feature, you see another place where information can come to you simply. Not sure if this has an RSS handle on it. You?
• Google Alerts – This is another service for tracking information and it might give you something different. You might also try Yahoo! Alerts too, to be sure you’re catching everything. (note: I currently use neither, and so can’t report if they’re especially helpful).

What’s interesting about this is how little has changed since his post, in October 2007.

Mashable just did 2 listening tool roundups, one for the free tools, and one for the paid tools. Worth checking out, but nothing cheap, simple, and comprehensive.

Have you found anything worth adding to the list? Everyone seems to be building some kind of listening tool these days… have you seen a good one?