See what people are saying about you: 5 (free!) tips from Mitch Joel

In an engaging – and completely jam-packed – three-hour session this morning, expert Mitch Joel walked Shop.org Boot Camp attendees through a variety of ways to quickly learn what people are saying on the web.

Here were some of the tools – all free – that Joel suggested leveraging:

1) Google Reader. Joel swears by Google Reader for an easy way to group together everything he wants to read. Using an RSS feed, you can easily see which sites and blogs have been updated, and when. (Hint: Want to follow a website that doesn’t have an RSS feed set up? A new tool within Google Reader allows you to create an RSS feed for a specific site, which can easily give you instant insight when your competitors update their web page.)

2) Social Mention. What’s the best way to measure what people are saying about you on social networks? There’s no foolproof formula that I’ve found – and, believe me, I’ve looked – but Social Mention seems to be a fair solution, especially since it’s free. They call themselves a “Google Alert for social media” and several people attending Boot Camp mentioned on Twitter that they were going to try it out.

3) Google Alerts. Many in the audience were already familiar with Google Alerts for real-time updates on what’s being said about certain brands or people. But Google Alerts can dig deeper than web or news searches, searching blogs, allowing subscribers to drill down by date, and even enabling people to view links or sites by location.

4) Refollow. Want to get a better sense of your entire Twitter world? Check out Refollow, which Joel calls “a way to slice and dice Twitter in a way you otherwise can’t, unless you have an expensive platform.”

5) Google Trends. Wish you could get trending topics from the world wide web much like you can on Twitter? You can. Check out Google Trends, which lists the hottest topics in real time. You can also compare trending topics to see how they compare – a good way to see how your company is faring against the competition.