FREE Sleuth tools, Steemit ideas & tips for helping with your next Steemit post. (Part 1: Social Media Monitoring Tools & content ideas).

Hi Steemians, by way of introducing myself I thought I'd share some free Social media monitoring tools and ideas to help you, me and our fellow Steemians with our next Steemit posts (perhaps your a novice or a guru but either way these tools and some ideas should help when the writer’s block arrives - and it will).   

Background:  My name is Johnny and I've worked in the media/publishing/newspaper industries for over two decades and during the last few years I have helped many a news room or researcher get 'tooled' up with software which helps writers/researchers find their next 'story' by understanding social media monitoring tools as well as 'news/blog' monitoring tools.

I have also researched various tech around advertising/marketing/content management systems and researched extensively at affiliate marketing techniques/strategies (Black/Grey/White Hat methods) in order to help companies protect their sales funnels. One company had a black hat attack on its website as the hatters were duplicating the company’s sales funnel (landing pages), & placing the black hat ‘sales funnel’ in front of ‘web traffic’ by tracing were the companies actual daily traffic was visiting before ending up at their own website. Devious techniques & at great cost to the company who was targeted!    

I mention this, as there are some very good White Hat affiliate marketing strategies that could also help you with your next steemit post – but only if you use the strategy with good intent as to supply informative ‘content’ and freebies to the steemit platform which would therefore also allow you to make additional income from your posts, rather than just votes. Blatant ‘offers’ or sales pitches will not work nor will they be welcome on the platform (IMO) but there are some additional good ideas I want to share that could add even more value to your steemit content but  more on that later!     

I have been a member of Steemit for about 5-6 weeks now and this is in fact my first post. I have been paying very careful attention to what’s happening on the site, its concept/ethos etc and from my experience in the publishing industry - it’s the most disruptive idea/concept to be conceived/built since the Gutenberg Press. And I don’t make that statement lightly, at all. So congrats to @Ned & team.   

But perhaps you don’t need any ideas, perhaps you already have the ‘gift of the gab’ - just like @Stellabelle (there is bound to be Irish blood in her family tree as she read’s so ‘Bono’esk’ in her posts) or maybe you have the surgical brain/insight of @Pharesim (Vorsprung Durch T­­­echnik) or the wooing of @pfunk (who reminds me of a Southern Baptist warming hearts in Alabama Pews) or finally, let’s not forget @Ned who’s posts/interviews remind me of a ‘..preacher  stealing hearts at a travelling show…’ as he gathers the next Steemian masses under a white tent in a field somewhere. Probably Virginia, come to think of it ;-) (@DantheMan). 

Anyways…   

But if you don’t have ‘their’ automatic gifts to sit down at your computer and churn out stories every day then perhaps the thoughts, ideas and research below will help you in your steemit postings.    I have gained interesting experience over the years whilst working with different investigative journalists as I assisted with online 'research', aiding with the tracking/monitoring of individuals (some not very nice people) of interest.   

Come to think of it, I just may allude and share some of my Digital Sherlock strategies/adventures on other steemit posts later  ;-)  

However, the same techniques and ideas can be applied to whether you are a blogger about cooking or a blogger of all things 'tech'. Again, this post is aimed at established bloggers or 'newbie’s' on steemit as a way of offering additional ideas & tools to help make the whole process 'easier' when that damn writers block comes.  

So, I have listed in this post (Part 1: Social Media Tools & research ideas) a selection of FREE tools that are available (web based) to aid you. They are free either as a full blown service or offer basic 'data retrieval' and then encourage you to upgrade after a period of time but all do offer some sort of level of usage.    

In Part 2, I will outline news monitoring resources and how to seek out new ideas for your next blog with regards to being able to research different industries via news sources (your niche area of interest) and I'll give additional tips/ideas on 'real world' examples and how you could take those ideas and help you research & write up your findings in your steemit blogs.    

Some of these tools are very powerful and I have known investigative journalists 'break' stories just by monitoring different politicians or councillors (locally elected government representatives) via their social media activity and by visualising / monitoring all of their tweets at the same time - to enable her to read between the 'lines' so to speak and like any good journalist - spot the trend by user behaviour or 'spikes' of commentary during different political 'storms' that were brewing.   

You may find some of these free tools functionality ‘repetitive’ but the idea is for you to find which one’s GUI (Graphic User Interface ie the dashboard) is most easy for you to use/work with. Or you may find that one tool does one thing better and the ‘other tool’ you use for something else.   

I have also listed some Geotracking social media tools, which themselves really do make you 'think out of side of the box' in regards to having, what’s referred to as a 'God's eye view' of geographical locations and how 'tweets or facebook posts are happening in real-time and off course around some sort of 'news worthy' event. 

Unfortunately these ‘Gods Eye Tools’ are not free but if you really wanted to delve deeper into this social media monitoring world then it’s the next logical step. Using them makes you think you’re in a movie like 'Borne Identity' or 'Eyes in the Sky'. Powerful stuff for geo monitoring!   

Example: A good journalist friend, used this tech to reach out to 'users' directly - who themselves where near or at a shopping mall when an industrial explosion occurred at the premises. She used Twitter to send private messages to the persons in the 'geographical area', whom she found/traced by their social footprint and therefore themselves effectively eye witnesses to the event in order for her to get a statement/comment etc. See how powerful this stuff is?

Like I previously mentioned, I'll outline in part 2 how this tactic and how a steemit user took full advantage of something similar to bring 'breaking news' to the steemit platform and with running 14 hour commentary - which in fact I used as my central source of news to understand what was happening in the area of interest he was blogging about (God, it was clever & more about that later - but you could do the same)!   

But don’t worry, as you don’t have to be sitting at a reporters desk in the New York Times offices to use this tech as I have a few ideas how you could use this 'Gods Eye View' tech in 'your' world for reaching your niche.

 So if you ever want to 'get rid of that writers block' for your next steemit post and wish to seek out new products, press releases or the latest new trends/industry news in your 'niche/genre' then these are the tools you need, whether like I mentioned, you are a newbie or a budding sleuth investigative journalist!    'Think. Innovate. Then Steemit' ;-)  

 Quick then Steemians! The Games Afoot!

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Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Homles. The famous sleuth's life may have been made easier if he had some of these tools below to help assist him!

Social Media Listening Tools - What Is Social Media Monitoring?   

Please don’t think that social media monitoring is a one off thing that’s done on a niche or genre that either you have an interest in or the industry you work in. It’s also referred to as Social Listening and it’s the formula of processing and tracking in real-time (and indeed historically) conversations, observations, commentary with not only regards to person(s) but also for (this is important)    

• Website domain addresses or any URL,  
• via the all important Hashtags (trends),  
• Keywords and any information (phrase) or products (named) that are associated to your niche/industry,  
• The industries authoritive bodies/organisations (for and not for profit / or regulatory bodies),  
• Competition or competitors that are also interested in the same genre/industry.    

The above '5' are 'areas' of interest when deciding which topic you wish to research. Off course you don’t have to do them all, but a researcher worth their salt with get stuck into really knowing the industry or areas of interest to help cast that all important 'net'.    

Some of the sites below allow for multi 'profiles' to be 'set up' which can be different areas of interest to yourself which allows you to come back over time and track/monitor behaviours within a graphically displayed environment - so you can extract your research from it easily. Basically imagine it’s a 'Group Think Tank' whereby all the best or knowledgeable experts are sharing their insights directly to your monitor.   

The tools below have a brief outline of what they do and how they will assist you in researching, finding the latest trends or ideas in your industry. Obviously if you can find new info which you believe would be substantive or valuable to your nice/industry (whether new products or reviews or important news ) then that is worth sharing in your steemit posts - if that’s what you intended to do with the info.    

Perhaps, it’s to give authority to your reviews or options on those genre/industries of interest to you and therefore your steemit readers via the all important relevant #Tags on the Steemit platform (check out the tags and if you’re comfortable in that 'niche' then research it further with these tools and report back with insightful thoughts).    

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360Social   

http://www.360Social.me   

360Social (at time of writing) is a FREE ‘social research tool’ which allows to you find all social media footprints/social media platforms which anyone is a member off. Currently its fully functional for all early birds who download the browser extension (all browsers are supported). You simply click on a social media profile and it will return all additional info, contact details and lists the additional social media platforms that the user belongs to. If you are researching someone’s reach or would like to find out on which additional platforms they post on – then this is the tool for you. Grab it while it’s still available for ‘early birds’. 

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Social Mention   

http://socialmention.com/   

This little beauty is well thought off by its users. It has a vast database and connected to over a hundred social media sites (last time I checked). Its totally free and it has always got great reviews over the years and you get to delve deep into its four main categories of interest (that it deeps important) which is defined by social behaviour based upon Strength, Sentiment, Passion and Reach.     

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Addictomatic

 http://addictomatic.com/   

Addictomatic searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images. It’s a tool to keep up with the hottest topics, perform ego searches and get info on what’s up, what’s now or what other people are feeding on. It allows for a personalize dashboard and keeps track of your different 'search profiles' that you have set up. Off course it runs in the cloud so it does the work while you sleep!! But like other social listening tools (and this is important Steemit users) it provides existing trending topics already, so if one of them is your niche then that’s your next post (Think. Innovate. Steem It)!  

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Twazzup   

www.twazzup.com/   

Real-time Monitoring and Analytics for Twitter. Twazzup is great for social media beginners looking for a Twitter monitoring tool. You just enter the name/topic you want to track and you instantly get real-time updates, meaning the most active top influencers, & the top keywords related to your search which will help you to research further.   

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IceRocket  

 http://www.icerocket.com/  

 This tool offers blog, Twitter and Facebook monitoring in 20 languages, as well as results graphs that you can play with. It allows you to choose the periods of time you are interested in monitoring. It can be used for keeping an eye on your blogger activity (and others), as they cliam to have millions of blogs in their database and they also provide the possibility of finding the latest trend terms related to your search.    **One thing I learned about this tool, is that you need to try and get the exact spelling of your researched data correct as you don’t get a 'did you mean?' option!      

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Twitonomy   

http://www.twitonomy.com/    

Twitonomy offers a range of metrics for free, with premium features enabled for $19/month. Simply sign in with your Twitter account for robust analytics about your account. You can add your competitor’s Twitter handles to gain insights about their activity too. Twitonomy shows you details of your Twitter lists, followers and followings, your most popular Tweets, engagement statistics and much more. You can track conversations on Twitter based on hashtags, users, or lists. The details are displayed in graphs and easily digestible stats. 

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Buffer

https://buffer.com/   

Schedule/share your Steemit posts for later.   Buffer shares your content at the best possible times throughout the day so that your followers and fans see your updates more often. Buffer makes your life easier with a smarter way to schedule the great content you find. Add all your Buffer posts at one time in the day and then your Buffer account posts them for you throughout the day. 

You also get deeper analytics than if you just post to social networks directly. It allows you to manage/schedule:    Facebook: Profile, Page, and Group (for groups you do have to be the admin) LinkedIn: Profile and Company Page, Twitter: Profile, Google+: Business Pages,  Pinterest accounts Instagram etc.   

Its FREE then allows you to upgrade for more 'tools' but even the basic packages are great. Remember that you also have to repost/promote your Steemit posts via your own social media networks. Its a good way to start this progress if you are not already doing so.  

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Boardreader 

http://boardreader.com/   BoardReader allows users to search multiple message boards simultaneously, allowing users to share information in a truly global sense. Boardreader is focused on creating the largest repository of searchable information for our users. Users can find answers to their questions from others who share similar interests. Our goal is to allow our users to search the “human to human” discussions that exist on the Internet! 

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Howsociable   

HowSociable.com   

Free monitoring tool for measuring your brands or keywords using 32 social networking sites. HowSociable provides a simple way for you to begin measuring any brand’s (your niche/industry) visibility on the social web. Compare brands with those of competitors and similar sized businesses.  

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Postific   

www.postific.com   The full set of social media tools. Post content to over 10 social networks with one single click of a button. Get real time click-through statistics with your domain name. Measure and analyze the best results from your social posts. Monitor the social media conversations that are important for your next steemit post.   

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SharedCount  

 http://www.sharedcount.com   

Track your shares, likes, tweets, and more. Enter a web address of a page and find out how much it has been shared in different social networking and bookmarking sites. Currently includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, and StumbleUpon.   

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Shared Counter 

http://www.visiospark.com/shared-counter/   

(Company VisioSpark.com Inc does not appear to be associated to 'SharedCount' above).   The social media counts checker gets the social count from popular social networks. This social checker fetches the socially shared count from Facebook, Google +, Linkedin, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Buffer and Delicious.     

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Social Searcher Socialbuzz   

http://www.social-searcher.com/social-buzz/   

Social Searcher / Socialbuzz is a real-time search engine for Facebook, Twitter and Google+. It is designed to provide a different kind of user experience for curious users and deep analytics for the marketing professionals, such as: posts types, top links/domains, keywords, sentiment, top users and posts. Also the service has a quick possibility to change your search locale, filter search results by content type and popularity.

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Simplymeasured free social media-tools  

http://simplymeasured.com/free-social-media-tools/   

Visting their site will offer you a section of free tools whereby very detailed information is returned by your search but though you get a set of 'freebies' as they refer to it the actual full membership costs start at $500. Yikes! Yes, I know it’s expensive - but think of the freebie tools this way - you can be sure that the data is 'good' - so use the basic free tools at the above link for initial 'quick hits' (it’s a bit like a very strong coffee first thing in the morning!).   

Analysis measure your key customer service metrics on Twitter. Instagram User Analysis - measure your engagement, content, and trends. Facebook Fan Page Analysis - how healthy is your Facebook Fan Page? Study trends and timing. In-depth analysis of  your Facebook Fan Page visitors’ demographics and activity. Compare your Facebook Fan Page against your competitors’ and analyze the performance of your content on Facebook. Free Vine Analysis understand the performance of your Vine clips on Twitter. Free Social Traffic Analysis-  find out how social media impacts your website performance.  Free Traffic Source Analysis - find out which sources send the most traffic to your website.   

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WhosTalkin   

http://www.whostalkin.com/   

WhosTalkin is a social media monitoring tool that lets you search for conversations surrounding the topics that you care about most. Whether it be your favourite sports team, food, celebrity, or brand name; Whostalkin will help you find the conversations that are important to you. WhosTalkin search and sorting algorithms combine data taken from over 60 of the most popular social media sites.  

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Geographical Location based Social Media Monitoring tools. Whos watching you?

Getting to grips with Geo social tools is relatively easy today than compared to 8 years ago when they where over complicated and you needed a degree in computer science to understand the GUI (Graphic user Interface). But luckily that’s all changed these days and it’s as easy as A,B, C to get started and find the information you need to help you with your next Steemit post. 

Unfortunately, they can be expensive and there are dozens of them in the marketplace. Most of them are trying to sell into the vertical ‘law’ enforcement agencies marketplace or other security based firms, so they probably wont respond to ‘web based emails’ etc so I have decided not to list them but instead I have listed a few that are quite open to ‘joe public’ and will give you a taste of the next generation of social media monitoring tools!     

Be aware that some of the big corporate companies (security firms, Oil & Gas etc) employ personal to just sit and monitor any ‘protests’ or ‘brand’ mentioning on social media and run ‘disinformation’ campaigns to counter any social media posts, either based upon geo location or generally targeting users individually. This tech can also counter such behaviour – so use this tech wisely and for the purpose of  – ‘speak truth to power’. 

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Ban.jo 

(Price: Email to request a trial period. As of time of writing I am still waiting on a reply 3 days later!)   

Banjo instantly organizes the world’s social and digital signals by location, giving an unprecedented level of understanding of what’s happening anywhere in the world, in real time.  They also claim to have ‘tech’ that can ‘read behaviours on social media (monitor) and then predict ‘events’ that are expected to happen from them. Sounds a little bit like the minority report – but its algorithm’s are programmed to do exactly this. Off course, like most tech – it can be used for the better good, or to better the bad.   

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Gobabl.com (not global) Location-based Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Platform   

1 User is 'free' but with limited tech offered. 10 users is $10 a month (find a few friends and buy a years subscription perhaps?)   

This platform, like I mentioned before, will look like your working at NSA or something similar. This is a very powerful tool for monitoring in real time what’s happening around the world via geolocation. I do not know your niche/industry that you are interested in, but certainly if you are more inclined to be 'opinion' or 'commentary' based in your blogging style of writing then imagine if you could via this platform monitor protests, marches or other events where crowds have gathered and from their social media footprints, either reach out to them via private messaging in real time for their comments or generally take a 'lean back' approach and evaluate the 'event' you are monitoring and give running/timely updated commentary on your steemit post around said event. Interesting indeed.    

Their website states: 'Location is the most precise way to utilize social data. Events and news come from places, not hashtags or keywords. GoBabl has designed a clean, intuitive way to view this data and to make a return on your social media investment. The GoBabl location-based social media monitoring dashboard provides users with actionable insights based on data from user-selected areas in real-time. Get insights and live streaming content from users who matter most. Filter all of that data with our patent-pending filtration system.'   

A list of the features on Global.com platform include:   

• Visualize: Visualize search results from any location in a clean easy to use map view, collage view, streaming feed, and analytics suite.   
• Embedded feed: Aggregate social content from multiple locations and share a link of the selected locations content. Put the embedded feed anywhere you like.   
• Location-Based Social Media Alert:  Get notified of important content real-time notifications based on specific keyword, #hashtag or username triggers. Setup the alerts and rest assured that the content you want curated will automatically be sent to you.   
• Live stream Real-time streaming feed from selected locales: Find out who is talking, what they’re talking about and how they feel.   
• Analytics: Discover keyword/hashtag trends, time-based activity, influential posters, activity trends, popular venues in target location.  
• Geofenced; Sentiment Monitoring Measure the sentiment of a social conversation from any location.   
• Social Search: Search within specific geofenced locations for social content based on specific keywords, hashtags or phrases.   
• Top Social Network Influencers: Gain insights on a social profile and view social media networking content providers who receive the most engagement or have the largest audiences.   
• Language translator: Translate results from social media searches in multiple languages quickly.   
• Filter & Curate: Filter aggregated search results by keyword, hashtag, date, time, user, and demographics.
• Heatmap: View Visualize location-based social media data on a heatmap to show areas with the most social chatter.   
• Engagement: Engage with Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. like, comment, follow individual users in targeted areas from multiple social networks at once.   

It’s worth a try and a great tool (depending on your style of writing) to have in your arsenal.  

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GeoFeedia    

https://geofeedia.com/   

(Price: not available - so I'm sure its expensive then. Contact via email to request signup and certainly not as signup/test friendly for trying Geo social tech that Gobabl - but I have a friend who uses it and he swears by it - so its worth mentioning as he 'knows his stuff' in this space).  

Their website bodly states: '...Our patented, location-based intelligence platform allows you to predict, analyze and act on real-time social media content from anywhere in the world — with a single click. Hundreds of customer experience, education, public sector and security teams rely on the Geofeedia platform to listen to and engage with social media content from locations across countries, cities, buildings and everything in between from Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, VK, Sina Weibo and other social channels...' 

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Well, that should be enough to get you started on your Digital Sherlock strategies ;-)    

In Part 2, I will outline the free ‘news’ monitoring tools to help you sniff out trending & news worthy content relevant to your niche/industry/hobby and I will also outline some examples of when a selection of these tools are used successfully, you will be able to find relevant information for your next steemit post.    

I will also suggest some real world ideas around additional revenues that you can make whilst benefiting your followers or giving value back to Steemians who you expect to read your post.    

I hope this post has helped you in some way, so until until next post, thanks kindly for reading this. Please vote/share if you deem it relevant. Comment or ask questions I am happy to respond or assist with your next endeavour. Thanks @JohnnyD (aka – DigitialSherlock ;-)