Use Social Media to Track Customers and Prospects

Posted by: Today's Tip Contributor on April 07

With the pervasive adoption of social media, no doubt your customers and prospects are out there. They are sharing their opinions and ideas in unaided, natural conversations. More important, they’re also influencing others.

So where are your customers online? Do they blog, use Twitter, LinkedIn?

There are a ton of free tools than can help you figure this out. Use them. Search for your brand using sites like:

• Google Blog Search

• Technorati

• Google Search Trends

• Del.icio.us

• Flickr

• YouTube

• Facebook

Searching free tools for your company, competitors, and products can be very revealing. You can get a great sense about what your customers are saying about you and the space in general.

Most online conversations are RSS-enabled. So if you can, use an RSS reader (such as Bloglines or Google Reader) to centrally track the different conversations happening about your company.

Jay Henderson
Director of Product Marketing
Unica
Waltham, Mass.