How to monitor the blogosphere with Technorati Watchlists

There are many ways to monitor blogs and keep up with online conversations. This article will focus on Technorati’s Watchlist and how you can use it to keep abreast of happenings in the Blogosphere.


What is Technorati?

Technorati is a search engine. Just like Google, it will return the results of a search, based on keywords and phrases that you provide. While Google is the de facto search engine of the Internet, Technorati specializes in searching blogs. Many search engines can search blog content, but Technorati is the recognized leader in searching the Blogosphere.

Why is it important to search the Blogosphere? If you run a business, it’s imperative that you understand what people are saying about your clients and your clients’ products and services. You also need to remain aware of any world events that could affect your clients. The Blogosphere is a gold mine of public opinion and community conversations. You need to tap into this virtual mother lode and take advantage of its offerings. To do that, you’ll need to do some digging.


Technorati’s Watchlist

Let’s say that you are attending a conference and all of the sessions are being held in one large room. Some people are standing at podiums and giving speeches. Others are sitting along the wall and speaking quietly together. While still others are standing in a large circle, engaging in a heated debate. All of these actions are taking place simultaneously. You know at least some of these speeches and conversations are important to you, but you can’t possibly move around the room quickly enough to capture the information that you need.

The Blogosphere is just like that conference. Speeches, conversations, and debates are constantly raging throughout the online world, and you need to learn how to filter just the bits that are of interest to you. Technorati provides you with the ability to search and sift through the blog content and pick out just the gems that you need. However, the conversations are ongoing and constantly changing. How do you keep up?

Technorati’s Watchlist gives you the ability to save your search requests and rerun them at any time. One example where a Watchlist is particularly useful is when you want to track blog posts about your client or perhaps a new product that a client is releasing. You could setup a Watchlist with search words containing the name of the client or the product name. Then you would rerun your Watchlist throughout the day and monitor the search results.

Obviously, this method can become quite tedious. It’s not very practical to run Technorati searches all day. Luckily, you can subscribe to the Watchlist search results and let your feed reader alert you when new content arrives.

The following steps will guide you through the process of creating a Technorati account, creating a Watchlist, and then subscribing to the results.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. 

   Create a new Technorati Account
   
   Before you can create a Watchlist, you’ll need to setup a free account with Technorati. Go to http://www.technorati.com. In the upper-right corner of the Technorati home page, click on the Sign up link.
   
   You’ll be taken to a very simple registration form. You must supply a user name, your email address, and a password. Click on the Sign Up Now button and you will be taken immediately to Your Account page.

2. 

   Create A Watchlist
   
   On your account page, under Your Watchlist, there is a search box. Enter your search words or the URL of a website that you would like to search on. This is where you would enter the name of your client or the address of their corporate website.
   
   Click on the Add to Watchlist button and Technorati will immediately perform the search using your search words.
   
   Watchlist search results display the title of the post, the name of the blog, and the excerpt of the post where your search words were found.
   
   Your search has now been saved and you can rerun it from your Technorati account page

3. 

   Subscribe
   
   If you’d like to subscribe to your Watchlist, look for the Subscribe link. It will appear at the bottom of a newly created Watchlist and at the top-right of a previously created Watchlist. If you click on the Subscribe link, a new browser window will open.
   
   Copy the internet address from the new browser window into your feed reader. If you need more information about feed readers, please read this article: http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002400.html.
   
   You’re all set to monitor the Blogosphere. Your feed reader will periodically run the Watchlist search. When new blog posts match your search criteria, your feed reader will display the new posts.

4. Subscribe via Email
   
   If you haven’t quite gotten into the whole feed-reading thing yet, it’s okay, you can still subscribe to your Watchlist results using email. I recommend two services that are easy to use for this purpose: Feedlinx (http://www.feedlinx.com), which I developed and maintain, and Squeet (http://www.squeet.com). Just take the internet address from the Watchlist’s Subscribe window and add it through one of these services. You can then receive your updates via email.

Tips & Warnings

• Conclusion There are many other things that you can do with Technorati. Steve Rubel put together a great post of his top ten favorite features: http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/11/ten_technorati_.html There are also other ways to monitor blogs, but I hope this at least gets you started in the right direction. Blog conversations are constantly occurring and constantly changing. More-than-likely, people are talking about your clients in the Blogosphere right now, and your clients will expect you to know what those people are saying. With tools like Technorati’s Watchlist, I hope you’ll be successful in meeting those expectations.