Topsy is a social media tool that uses Twitter to monitor trends

10-second breakdown:

Topsy is a social media tool that indexes and ranks search results based on the most influential conversations millions of people are having every day about each specific term, topic, page or domain queried. Recommended for marketing teams, PR professionals, and journalists looking to identify trends and discover link building opportunities.

Topsy is used in small (0-50 employees), medium (51-1,000 employees) and enterprise companies (1,000+ employees).

The good:

You can segment mentions for a particular timeline, which can be a great asset for your strategy.

Language segmentation is another big plus.

Also, you can set-up email alerts for brand mentions that are not news related and for searches on specific topics of interest, similar to Google alerts.

The bad:

The sentiment analysis is not always accurate, I would recommend only using it as a marginal indicator.

Not all influencer results given correspond to the notion of an industry influencer or the consecrated lists that already exist.

The user interface could benefit from some improvement.

How it works:

Using the social search function, you can browse the social web for a certain search term. You can specifically search for links, tweets, photos, videos, influencers or all of the above.

On every search result page Topsy gives you a count on the left, which is the number of search results for that period. That number is a count of tweets, registered as unique by links or retweets. Multiple retweets are only counted once while multiple tweets for a single URL are only counted once.

With Twitter’s data continually expanding, the number of tweets for a topic can to be higher if you check it on any given day compared to the previous day, especially if you’re looking at the number over the past month.

Digital marketers can use this tool to find out who tweeted their content and what its total reach on Twitter is. Oftentimes when people tweet a link to your blog, they don’t include your username so it doesn’t show up in your mentions. Topsy gives you a way to search for a URL and find every person who’s tweeted that link, even if they used a link shortener.

Looking at the search results, under the total number of tweets found on your query, you’ll notice that you have a sentiment indicator, based on a score of 100. This score is based on the overall Twitter sentiment at the time and will be adjusted based on the overall Twitter environment. For example, during holidays (when people are overly positive with updates) a score will accurately reflect the time period that a user is viewing for a more accurate reading. This will give you an idea of how people responded to certain tweets and how the general public perception has formed around that topic.

Select the time frame for your search, in the latest results section. You can see Tweets from the past hour, past day, past seven days, past 30 days, all time, or a specific range. Narrow your search further by type of content and language.

Social media managers can use Topsy to find the latest tweets on a subject and stay on top of that story. Digital PR managers can also use this feature to track news and deliver relevant, timely responses. This can also be done by tracking social trends in a certain language.

You also have an option to view the trends for your specific search query with Topsy analytics.

Another great way to maximize the potential of this tool is to use it for your content marketing research. Analyze both long tail and short tail keywords with Topsy and look at the latest trends around them.

Find out which search terms are most searched by your users and use them in your content to ensure more visibility and more traffic. By tracking a certain topic, you can assess the engagement levels and join or create conversations on that topic.

Click advanced search to narrow your search further and view advanced search operators.

Identify influencers in your industry and find out what they tweet about. Find out if some of them shared your posts and engage with them.

Click on their name to go to their Twitter account and see their bio. If you click on their corresponding mentions, you’ll see all of their tweets about your search term.

Use the advanced search function to include related search terms, exclude negative search terms, search into a specific user’s profile of within a site or domain.

Topsy pro offers a number of additional features, including the ability to track the geography of users who interact with your content, measure your content’s reach and exposure. It also gives you the possibility to observe metrics across web domains, including Facebook, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Compared to the free version, Topsy pro offers many more possibilities.

Topsy can be a great ally to social media marketers, enabling them to identify key influencers and popular content. A powerful Twitter analytics tool, it can be used for influencer research, keyword research, editorial calendar planning and online PR.

If you’re managing a marketing team I’d recommend starting directly with the Pro version the get a view of Topsy’s full potential.

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