Social Media Search & Monitoring

Trying keep up with social networks and media outlets to perform routine brand protection, media monitoring, and protective intelligence tasks can be overwhelming. Two new services have come across our radar in recent weeks and are worth mentioning. YackTrack provides search capabilities for references and comments to a specific URL (post, page, etc.) as well as a keyword search (chatter) across multiple social networks. The service could be particularly valuable when attempting to track reactions and responses to a product announcement or PR blog post, where the option to turn the query into a feed would seem quite handy. WhosTalkin.com (recently reviewed on ReadWriteWeb.com) takes a more traditional search engine approach focused on the social web, with a plethora of sources. If it will keep the promise to soon offer the option to save searches and create RSS feeds, this tool could quickly become a must for Executive Protection operations and other Risk Mitigation professionals.