Knowing what is being said about you, your business and your target market is an important habit that every work at home mom should be on top of. Spend some time every day listening so you don’t get left trying to play catch up.

When I say “spending some time”, I don’t mean hours a day. Once everything is set up, a few minutes a day, or even weekly will help you stay on top of your market happenings.

Four free tools that will help you listen in on the internet are:

1. Google Alerts
2. Technorati
3. Twitter
4. RSS Readers

Listening does not involve participating – the key skill is pattern analysis. Staying on top of everything your compeitition is up to, and doing it better for your customers will lead to more business for you.

Let’s have a look at each of the four listening tools:

Google Alerts:

Google Alerts is one the most powerful Google services available for those who

want to stay ahead of their competition. With Google Alerts, you’ll receive an email notification whenever something happens in your niche or topics that matter to you.

Setting up alerts is very easy – simply enter the topic you want to monitor, how often you want to receive emails and your email address. There are also several different types of alerts available: Web, Blog, Comprehensive, News, Video and Groups.

Alternatively, using GoogleAlerts.com, you can set up your alerts via RSS Feeds (note – free version only allows you to track 3 queries).

Technorati:

Monitoring your competitors and keywords is just as easy with Technorati. Simply enter the website or keyword into the search box and watch all the information that appears.

Content is broken down into the following categories:

• Everything
• Posts
• Blogs
• Photos
• Videos

Conveniently, at the top of the search results page you’ll find an RSS feed specifically for your search. Subscribe to that feed in your RSS Reader, and you’ll be instantly notified whenever Technorati finds content according to your specifications.

Note: If you have a blog, be sure to sign up for Technorati (it’s free), and claim your blog – but that’s another post!

Twitter:

Twitter is an interesting tool that I’ve discussed in the past. If you’re not yet familiar with Twitter, have a look at these posts:

• The Twitter Guide
• Going Social – In Plain English

There are a few ways to listen on Twitter. The first is simply by using their Search function and subscribing the the RSS Feed that is shown on the Twitter search results page.

My preferred method however is to use TweetBeep. TweetBeep allows you to quickly and easily set up email alerts based on your specified keywords or you can select specific domain links. There are a few basic options to complet your alert setup and then you’ll receive email alerts according to the delivery schedule that you set up.

RSS Readers:

My personal preference for an RSS Reader is Google Reader which has a ton of great features including a discovery tool which will help you track down RSS feeds that may be of interest to you (based on your current subscriptions).

An RSS Reader will provide you with the ability to save and view all RSS Feeds that you subscribe too. These feeds could be specific blog feeds, Google news feeds, search results (ie: Technorati or Twitter searches) etc. The advantage of saving all of your RSS Feeds into a reader is the ability to quickly browse through results without having to search the internet for them.

So there you have it – four of my favorite free tools that help me stay on top of everything that’s happening in the Wahm community. I hope these tips help you too!

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