Tracking Social Media Topics, Trends and Traffic
There are a variety of free tools that track the popularity of subjects on certain social media platforms. These tools can help you identify high-traffic interest areas and fine-tune your internet marketing efforts.
For example, a look at
WhatTheTrend.com shows that "Big Screen Kindle" is a hot topic on Twitter. The site explains that this subject is hot because the new Kindle's large screen is rumored to be more suitable for newspaper content, which is one step closer to a paperless culture. For a company like Heavy Content, which is in the business of developing and converting content for electronic media, this is relevant news. By placing that trending subject in my blog post, I'm providing a timely news bit for my audience of marketing and media professionals. I’m also joining the subject matter conversation, which can increase search traffic to my site.
Monitter is a tool that allows you to customize the Twitter subjects you would like to follow, in real-time. Monitter also allows you to tailor the topic search to a specific geographic area. Want to know if someone is tweeting about you or your company in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio? Find out on Monitter.
Flickr.com has a page that displays the tags of the most popular photos that have been uploaded to the site. This page reveals subjects and news areas that people are excited about on both local and international levels.
Another quick way to gauge interest in a topic is to use the search functions on Facebook (a top-20 search engine in its own right) or Twitter and see how many people are devoting their time to a subject. You might also check to see how many people are blogging about a particular subject by searching for blogs about your topic, or try searching any of the blog directories.
If you're looking to track visitor traffic for a site that deals with a particular subject, check
Compete.com, The demo version also allows you to track keyword traffic, and offers more detail for a fee.
Larger companies in need of a comprehensive tool to monitor and measure social media can do so with a subscription-based platform such as
Radian6. For a price, Radian6 brings everything together in one place and facilitates internal conversations about enterprise-related social media.
