It’s extremely important to monitor and measure your influence in social media however some of the premium tools out there might be a little beyond your financial reach. Good thing there are plenty of free tools you can mix and match to meet your own personal goals.

First off, check the availability of your brand name, user name or vanity URL on 120 popular Social Media sites with http://knowem.com. This is just an easy way to see if anyone has squatted on your brand name.

Now some of these tools are better at monitoring while others are better at measurement. I leave it up to you.

Social Media

SocialMention.com allows you to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.

KeoTag.com searches some of the most popular social media sites for tags that match your search term.

BackType is a “conversational search engine”. They index conversations scattered across the web to make following comments on a post or article a lot easier to manage.

CoComment is a service for managing, powering and researching conversations online. When using coComment, you can keep track of your comments across any site, share them with friends, and get notified when you get a response.

YackTrack lets you search for comments on your content from various sources or other blogs that talk about your content.

Blog Flux is a service that watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts, Digg submissions, Flickr galleries, and many other types of content. When ever there is an update, i.e a new follow-up, Commentful notifies you instantly.

Trackur is an online reputation monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet.

Twitter

Twitter Search helps you filter all the real-time information coursing through the Twittersphere.

Backtweets finds all Tweets linking back to an article or blog post. Site does a good job of archiving older tweets where tweetmeme only shows more recent tweets.

Twitrratr helps you distinguish negative from positive tweets surrounding a brand, product, person or topic.

Tweetmeme is similar to Backtweets except it only shows tweets that link to a post from the last 7 days.

Facebook

Facebook Lexicon lets you compare up to five different words or two-word phrases and see how many people talked about that term on Facebook each day.

Discussion Boards and Forums

BoardReader was developed to address the shortcomings of current search engine technology to accurately find and display information contained on the Web’s forums and message boards.

BoardTracker is a search engine that only displays information from their extensive database of forum threads.

Blogs

Blog Search is a Google search technology focused on blogs. You can do a lot of the normal advanced Google search commands to get optimal results.

BlogPulse is a blog search engine that also analyzes and reports on daily activity in the blogosphere

Trendpedia finds the articles online that talk about your topics. It organizes the articles in a trendline that shows the popularity of the topic over time up to three months ago up to today.

A Little Something Extra

I’ve been using the free version of FiltrBoxG2 which has been amazing. It’s very slick and easy to use. I highly recommend checking it out, you’ve got nothing to lose.

- Photo by adactio

You may have seen some of the following solutions installed on some of your favorite blogs:

• Ubervu
• BackType
• TweetBacks
• Disqus
• ChatCatcher
• IntenseDebate

The idea is to bring all comments about your posts into the posts themselves in an effort to centralize the conversation. This seems like a great idea until you put it into practice.

The main problem with most, if not all, of these solutions is that Twitter tends to overpower the rest. What we need is an effective means of filtering Twitter for quality comments, otherwise they should not be pulled into the post at all.

Are people seriously going through the “Social Media Comments” of the comments section and scanning through them for quality input? Good luck finding any quality input from Twitter. Just for kicks, go to this mashable post and count the number of quality comments from Twitter about that post. You more than likely saw the ridiculous number of trackbacks and didn’t even bother counting.

But what if, for the time being, we just excluded Twitter from this count. I mean, what benefit, if any, are they providing to the discussion. The only tweets worth including in comments are usually the comments that were sent to Twitter using Disqus, IntenseDebate or CommenTwitter.

However, there are sites that do provide quality comments worth importing into your posts, like StumbleUpon and Digg. These sites separate the promotion of the content (Digging/linking) from the commentary. ReTweeting is like Digging something. You wouldn’t display each individual Digg on your site below the comments, but you might use the Digg widget to represent the total number of Diggs received and then display any comments about the Digg in the comments of your post. This is how we should handle ReTweets. Use a site like TweetMeme to display your total RT count and then leave the ReTweets out of the comments.

As the filtering and organization of commentary across the web becomes more centralized we will hopefully see great improvements in the way we go about displaying them on our blogs. Until then, let’s just be smart about it.

-Photo by victoriapeckham

I’ve been thinking a lot about FeedBurner’s new changes where it includes FriendFeed subscribers in its total subscriber count. Unless FeedBurner removes this new feature, subscriber stats may be flawed forever. I don’t want to bore you with all the reasons why this is a bad idea, so instead I’m just going to say I agree with David Spinks, Rob Diana, and Dave Fleet.

This is just the icing on the cake as ProBlogger had already pointed out a few issues with FeedBurner prior to this new change. He brings up some valid points that ultimately led to me writing this post.

So now the question becomes, why do we even need FeedBurner anymore?

FeedBurner was originally created as a means of resyndicating your content in multiple XML formats to suit the needs of different RSS readers. At least that was the pitch that originally got me on board. Now it seems as if the main reasons people are using FeedBurner is to:

• Track RSS Subscriptions
• Allow people to subscribe to RSS via email
• Post process feeds with additional content (sharing links, custom footers, etc)

But now that RSS is reaching maturity, is there any need for this 3rd party service to control our feeds? I mean the whole point of RSS was to create a standardized XML file format that allowed information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The truth is that most if not all RSS readers can handle the shottiest RSS feeds (I’ve created some pretty shotty feeds in the past).

So what about all the stats, email and flair? Well if you have a wordpress blog and do not mind the extra load on your server, why not just manage your feed yourself with a couple new plugins. A quick Google search brought up this little gem: “How to assemble a Feedburner alternative using Wordpress plugins“. The post is a bit old but still very relevant. There are also 200+ RSS plugins in the Wordpress plugin directory that are sure to meet whatever needs you can come up with. Now it’s on us to push the development of these and new plugins to give us more control of our RSS feeds.

I left out a lot of my emotions concerning the new changes that have been made to FeedBurner because I didn’t want to just echo the cries of others and instead wanted to propose a possible solution. Long story short, the FeedBurner RSS chicklet used to be an easy way to gauge a blogs popularity. Now that it can be manipulated it has lost its usefulness.

- Photo by striatic

In a previous post I talked about how to increase the viral potential of your content with more actionable bookmarking and sharing buttons. Now here is a list of cool custom bookmarking and sharing buttons you can use on your blog that are sure to attract more bookmarks and shares.

Social Icons hand drawned

Polaroid icon set

Page Peel – A Free Social Media Iconset

IconTexto Web 2.0 User

Icons Cloud

LoonDesign Vector Icons Set

Handycons

Handycons 2

Social Media Icons Pack in 3 Sizes

Aquaticus Social Icons

WebDev Social Bookmark

Extended Set of Social Icons

Starry Site V1 from Evohosting

Set of Social Icons

Web Social Icons

Web 2.0rigami

Social Icons Made of Wood

Socialize Icons

Cheers

Heart: A Free Social Icon Set

The Leaves Fall: A Social Icon Set For Bloggers

Function Free Social Media Icons

IconsETC Black Inlay on Steel Social Media Icons

Elegant Social Media Icons Version 2.0

Social Post Stamps: Free icon set

Social Media Stars Icon Set: 26 Free Icons

FreeHand ColorStroked icon pack

One of the first things most people do with their new blogs is install some sort of plugin to help facilitate the sharing of their posts. Thoughts of Twitter obsessively retweeting your content begin to float through your mind and let’s not forget the ridiculous amount of traffic you’re gonna be getting from Digg.

The truth is you will probably get little to no activity on your posts regardless of what plugins you are using, especially if you are the new blog on the block.

So How Do I Go Viral?

Well, you don’t just “go viral” as there are a bunch of factors that go into the viral potential of content. However, there are certain things you can do to your blog that can help encourage the sharing of your content. I personally made these changes to my blog about 2 months ago and watched my number of Diggs, Stumbles and ReTweets double if not triple.

They key is to create actionable social bookmarking and sharing buttons.

What does that mean? Focus on the top social media sites that drive traffic to your site and use the official widgets or buttons of that site if they are available. Another equally viable solution is to create your own buttons or find some striking alternatives.

I think the problem is that people are so used to seeing small sharing icons or tiny AddThis and ShareThis buttons that they are starting to skip right over them. I’ve found that simply using the official Digg button over a smaller unofficial alternative has given me a reasonable boost of Diggs on some of my better posts. I’ve also begun to see a lot more activity from StumbleUpon as it only takes a few good stumbles to get a lot of relevant traffic.

So Where Do I Start?

AddThis has already started making moves to adapt to the changing needs of social media enthusiast’s. You can now bring your buttons outside of their little widget and create larger trackable buttons that are sure to have higher click rates.

I still think the best method is to use the recognizable official buttons and widgets of the selected sites you wish to use to share your posts.

Some you may want to consider are:

• Digg This button
• Reddit button
• TweetMeme button
• Stumble button

Be selective in deciding what sites to use and provide your readers with the BEST tools to properly share your content.

One problem I see in social media is the lack of transparency behind our thoughts and ideas. It’s completely understandable because we are dealing with small amounts of information of which we need to extrapolate the entire message. You can’t properly gauge the tone of someones voice or even measure their response by any reasonable standard. So instead, we jump to conclusions and get defensive when someone disagrees with us.

We are all guilty of this including myself.

This is why it is extremely important to be receptive to all the information coming at you and try your best to understand it. Some platforms work better than others because of the tone they set and the amount of conversation actually happening. For example; video sites like UStream and Viddler are much more transparent than Twitter because you get a sense of tone and enough time to explain yourself.

Social media is a melting pot of personality!

What one person sees as an aggressive remark could simply be a light-hearted opinion to another. We all come from different background and we all have our own ideas as to what is socially responsible. However, if we are going to be putting ourselves out there we need to just put on a happy face and do our best to follow along. I mean, just by putting ourselves out there we are subjecting ourselves to the random judgments and opinions of others, so is there ever a “wrong answer”? Everything is open for debate in this space, as it should be.

We are all just trying to communicate and there is no wrong way of going about it. So instead of pointing out each others wrongdoings, lets work harder to learn and grow together. That’s why I am in this space and that’s why I am reaching out to you.

- Photo by kcdsTM

I seem to find myself digging for great Twitter analogies when faced with the paradox of explaining Twitter to a friend. You would think that something so simple would be easy to explain, yet somehow people are still dumbfounded by its purpose.

So here is a solid little list of Twitter analogies I’ve found scattered across the web. Choose your weapons.

• Twitter is a Party
• Twitter is an Appetizer
• Twitter is a Text Webcam
• Twitter is a Tavern
• Twitter is a Hammer
• Twitter is a Coral Reef
• Twitter is a Cocktail Party
• Twitter is like Post-it Notes
• Twitter is a Virtual Coffee Shop
• Twitter is Telegram 3.0
• Twitter is a Conference Reception
• Twitter is Email Marketing 2.0
• Twitter is like Fishing
• Twitter is like Holiday Cards
• Twitter is a Line-A-Day Diary
• Twitter is like Sex

If you have a favorite analogy that is not on this list, please share it in the comments and I’ll throw it in the mix.

- Photo by OctopusHat

Retweeting has become a great way to find quality information through Twitter. New, more advanced, Twitter monitoring tools have made it easier to drown out a lot of the noise and focus on the quality posts being shared. It’s not fool proof as popularity and quality battle for the number one spots. You’ll almost always see the usual suspects in any “most ReTweeted” list, but there are also those gems that slip through the cracks.

Why should your care?

All of these sites provide valuable insight as to what type of content goes viral on Twitter.  A bunch of factors go into why a certain link might get retweeted more than another. Some general ones are:

• Quality of content
• Ease of retweeting
• Popularity of blog or blogger

I hope these tools can help you learn some things as well as find some great new bloggers and tweeps to follow.

Backtweets is the Twitter side of BackType, a conversational search engine. It’s a great way to see who’s tweeting your posts, even if they forgot to post it as a ReTweet. Every once and awhile I’ll type in my blog url just to see an overview of everyone that’s been tweeting my posts.

Tweetmeme scans Twitter for links and organizes them in an easy to retweet database. They’ve also provided a cool ReTweet button that displays the number of ReTweets a post has as well as gives you the ability to easily ReTweet the post.

Retweetist monitors Twitter for fresh links and ranks them according to how new and popular they are.

ReTweet radar is the Twitter side of http://spy.appspot.com. It gives you a large list of trending topics to zone in on as well as displays the most retweeted links and tweeps.

Re.twit’d doesn’t only look for popular ReTweeted links, it also displays popular ReTweeted tweets. If you ever just wanted to see the most popular tweets on Twitter and not necessarily the most popular links, then this is your place.

Repeets scans Twitter for all ReTweets and displays the recent most popular ones as well as  the most popular in the past 24 hours, past week and past month.

Part of keeping up to date with industry trends is knowing where to look for good quality web resources. Some sites stick out in this category more than others. I thought it would be nice to share a list of the sites I frequent the most often when in need of inspiration or web design help. I found most of these sites through Digg and Twitter over the years and continue to find new excellent resources from friends and followers.

I visit some sites more often than others because of the frequency and quality of the posts they provide. Specifically Smashing Magazine and Fuel Your Creativity have continuously stuck out.

Please share some of your favorite blogs that provide resourceful posts about web design in the comments.