Does the idea of using Twitter as a business tool make you a little dizzy? In theory, it sounds great, but in practice, Twitter is a little like trying to ride a bull. You jump on feeling strong and enthusiastic, but it can turn out to be the most dangerous ride of your social media life. The key to surviving the 140-character Twitter rodeo is to get a little Topsy before the gate opens.
Topsy is a Twitter management tool developed by a San Francisco start up company. It allows you to harness the billions of tweets that saturate the Internet regularly and put them to good use. Topsy isn’t your basic analytics tool. It is more of a search engine that collates data. Here is what Topsy brings to your project management calendar.
Shares Tracking
Not just shares for something you post, but shares for anything that interests you. All you do is enter the url of a piece of content and Topsy shows you it’s afterglow. That means you can see how the competition is doing, as well as monitor your own work.
Find Out Who are the Key Influencers
On top of that, Topsy breaks down the metrics to show you market influencers. Think about that for a minute. Let’s say you are a new agency looking to find resources and network. You might enter “content marketing” into the Topsy search box. It will show you a list of key influencers for that topic.
You can do a couple things with this information. First, follow the key influencers to leverage networking contacts and resources. Second, use Topsy to determine how aware these key influencers are of you by creating a combination search.
from@WriterAccess mylittleagency
This will show you how many time a key influencer mentions your company, product or blog. You might just be a rodeo champion, who knows.
Shared Links
Narrow your search down further to see how many links any one person or company shared to a website and the sentiment it received.
From@WriterAccess site:mylittleagency
This search would show how many times WriterAccess shared a link to your website and the basic response, positive or negative, the links received. The response appears as the Topsy Sentiment Score.
Sentiment scores are especially useful if you are developing a brand. The Topsy assessment of that brand gives you some indication of how well the effort is going. If you get a sentiment score of 5, you are not doing so well. A score of 50 is pretty good, though.
Analytics Tracking Options
Topsy offers a number of analytic tracking options that are useful. Keyword popularity, for example, allows you to monitor the ups and downs of a topic or product. You can also track domains to see who is getting mentions or who is obsolete in the Twitterverse.
The best thing about Topsy is it is all done online. There are no downloads or apps to install. Just bookmark the webpage and use it at will.
Writer Bio: Darla F is a full-time freelance writer who specializes in helping agencies meet their goals by developing creative and engaging content.
