publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/221442
"INVISIBLE" USERS AND THE ART OF MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA 4 Steps to Monitoring Social Media 1 Set up your accounts. We recommend HootSuite and Google Alerts in addition to Twitter. [View step-by-step tutorial at InsideLegal] Google Alerts provides basic monitoring of Internet activity/content outside of Twitter and is an important addition to your monitoring program. It is free with any Google account. 2 HootSuite is organized with tabs broken down into streams, allowing you to organize a lot of information for easy consumption. Tabs are the main topics (e.g., personal, work) and streams are specific search terms (e.g., #ILTA13, #BigData) under each tab. In HootSuite, begin by setting up search term streams, including: • our name, your firm name, your suppliers, your competitors, etc. Y • opical hashtags based on your interests (e.g., #CIO, #LegalIT, #BigData, #cloud, etc.) T • Industry events based on their content and similar interests (for example, #ILTA13 will return all tweets regarding ILTA's 2013 annual conference) 3 Certain accounts will be very connected in the areas you are interested in. Grow your list by seeing who your favorite accounts are following. 4 Add industry accounts such as legal and/or technology organizations (ILTA, ALA, ABA, etc.), technology publications (CIO, InformationWeek, etc.) and technology blogs/news (Mashable, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, EnGadget, etc.). SOCIAL MONITORING MADE EASY While these statistics about silent or invisible social media trackers might come as a surprise, this cautious yet calculated social media approach can also serve as the foundation for a great long-term social media strategy. Here are some related realities: •You might be surprised who is mentioned on Twitter. I was debating the need for tracking Twitter with a group of CIOs and someone stated they didn't see the need to track since no one would possibly be writing about them. I did a quick search and found a few mentions of said CIO, as well as some mentions of his firm. Later that night, I received a notice that he was following me on his new Twitter account! •Social business intelligence is free. Begin your social media journey by focusing on research and setting up a methodology for alerts and viewing content. Google Alerts or other browser alert tools are free and provide a very easy, yet customizable way to track trends, suppliers, competitors, as well as your own firm or individual brand. To expand to general industry news, establish a list of favorite bloggers, Twitter accounts and LinkedIn Groups. Then use blog readers, Google Alerts and Twitter management to monitor users' activities.