Links for Listening

  I had the great opportunity to speak at the SilverDocs Film Festival today to a roomful of documentary filmmakers. Each is trying to build their brand for their films and for themselves. Our session was called "Brand You" which tells you a lot of what we were trying to accomplish.

Amy Eisman and David Johnson from American University were on my panel. Great ideas. The territory we covered can be summarized by:

• Social: go deep in social media to truly engage people - ZeFrank, EpicFu, Neil Gaiman, CutLab
• Search: do everything to command right serach results from site design to social and more
• Site Design: usability and social features matter

To offer filmmakers some valuable research and listening resources we use everyday, I am publishing a list that our crack 360 Digital Influence  team has put together:

BLOG & MICROBLOGGING SEARCH ENGINES
Tool	URL	Tips
TECHNORATI Search	http://s.technorati.com	This is technorati's new search interface. You can use it to find top blogs based upon inbound links only.
TECHNORATI Advanced	http://www.technorati.com/search?advanced	The advanced search page allows you to search for blogs (rather than posts) based on tags.
GOOGLE BLOGS	http://blogsearch.google.com	Search Google's index of blog posts. The advanced search tab allows you to search based on additional criteria.
TWEET CLOUD	http://tweetscan.com/	Search public tweets for keywords and phrases.
TRENDPEDIA	http://www.trendpedia.com/	Create charts showing the volume of discussion around multiple topics. Generates cool graphs.
BLOG PULSE	http://www.blogpulse.com	Search for blog posts by keyword. Developed by Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
ICEROCKET	http://www.icerocket.com/index	Another blog search engine. You can also search MySpace content.
BLOGSCOPE	http://www.blogscope.net	Search 24 million blogs. Has several great features, including volume charting, related terms and geographical search.
BUZZ CHARTING
Tool	URL	Tips
BLOGPULSE TRENDS	http://blogpulse.com/trend	Compare the mentions of specific keywords and phrases in blog posts (GMAT vs. LSAT)
OMGILI CHARTS	http://buzz.omgili.com/graphs.html	Omgili Buzz Graphs let you measure and compare the Buzz of any term. Mostly from review sites/forums.
MULTIMEDIA SEARCH
Tool	URL	Tips
YOUTUBE	http://www.youtube.com	Search for videos and channels by keyword.
METACAFE	http://www.metacafe.com	High-traffic video search engine.
FLICKR	http://flickr.com/search/advanced	Search Flickr for photos, groups or people/users.
VIRAL VIDEO CHART	http://www.viralvideochart.com	Displays top 20 most-viewed video (1, 7, 365 days). Includes view counts and charting.
TRUVEO	http://www.truveo.com	Aggregate video search engine. Search videos from YouTube, MySpace, and AOL.
BLINKX	http://www.blinkx.com	Blinkx indexes and searches videos, podcasts and video blogs. Searches content of the video.
PICSEARCH	http://www.picsearch.com	Image search engine.
VTAP	http://www.vtap.com	Beta video search engine. Create feeds delivered to mobile devices.
FORUMS & MESSAGE BOARDS
Tool	URL	Tips
BOARD READER	http://www.boardreader.com	Search multiple message boards and forums. Sources are sometimes questionable.
BOARD TRACKER	http://www.boardtracker.com	Searches more than 37,000 message boards and forums. Similar to board reader.
OMGILI	http://www.omgili.com	Vertical search engine that focuses on "many to many" review platforms, such as, forums, discussion groups, answer boards and others.
GOOGLE GROUPS	http://groups.google.com	Searches usenet groups.
YAHOO! GROUPS	http://groups.yahoo.com	Searches all Yahoo! Groups.
INBOUND LINKS
Tool	URL	Tips
TECHNORATI	http://www.technorati.com	Enter in the URL to see how many POSTS link to a site/Web page.
GOOGLE ADVANCED	http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en	Use this search to find out what Web pages link to a site/pag - this includes both blogs and traditional sites.
KARTOO	http://www.kartoo.com/flash04.php3	Visual display for inbound links.
SOCIAL METER	http://www.socialmeter.com	Counts inbound links from several sources.
WEB SITE TRAFFIC
Tool	URL	Tips
COMPETE	http://www.compete.com	Estimates only of monthly visitor data. Best used on large high-traffic Web sites.
QUANTCAST	http://www.quantcast.com	Estimates only of monthly visitor data. Allows you to compare multiple Web sites in one chart. Best used on large high-traffic Web sites.
ALEXA	http://www.alexa.com	Comparative traffic graphs. Includes estimated reach, rank and page views.
BLOGFLUX PAGE RANK	http://pr.blogflux.com/index2.php	Tells you Google Page Rank for a web page. Best to use to compare top sites.
SEARCH DATA
Tool	URL	Tips
GOOGLE TRENDS	http://trends.google.com	Allows you to search trends and see search volume by country and region.
WORDTRACKER	http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com	Enter a keyword or phrase and will display average daily search volume.
YAHOO KEYWORD TOOL	http://inventory.overture.com	Displays previous month's search volumes for specific keywords and phrases.
FACEBOOK LEXICON	http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/	Displays volume of wall postings for specific term(s).  Similar to Google Trends.  Not great with obscure terms.
GOOGLE KEYWD TOOL	https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal	Get ideas for related keywords and search volumes.

Comments

[scott]

This is really helpful. thanks!

[Social Network Web Design]

Thanks for sharing these!

[Steve Nimmons]

Nice post. Some tips there for extra services I need to look into, especially social-meter and viral-video-chart.

thanks,
Steve...