Welcome to the first Brodeur Social Media Monday (ahem… Tuesday) post of the new decade!  This week’s spotlight is on a great little tool called TrendsMap.

What it is: TrendsMap tracks real-time, location-specific topics online – utilizing twitter, twitpic and news sites to aggregate all the information into a refreshingly well-executed user interface.

What it does: Track relevant or hot topics in your geographic area of interest, see how extensively your topic of interest has spread geographically, or track the history of a given topic both locally and globally. In short, this tool gives you insight into the intersection between location and social media:

Track relevant/hot topics in your geographic area of interest: While the net has made the world a smaller place, it has also empowered local communities to organize around topics of interest. One has only to look at the success of FourSquare and Yelp to see how friendly competition and local insider scoops drive successful brick-and-mortar business models as well as the success of platforms catering to them. If your business (or your client) needs local coverage, Trendsmap is a good way to filter out all the unnecessary information you couldn’t care less about. In other words, your wifi coffee shop in Wichita shouldn’t be too concerned that it’s not making the global twitter trends list… but a successful campaign would show movement in the Wichita area. TrendsMap helps you track this.

See how extensively your topic of interest has spread geographically: Let’s say your client opens up the coffers for a swanky Times Square event, invites the Twitterati and hopes to see buzz spreading throughout the land. TrendsMap lets you track this.

Track the history of a given topic both locally and globally: In both of the pictures above, there is a small, but interesting graph associated with volume of mentions. It may not be exportable or in color, but it does give you a sense of your campaign’s progress… or the lack thereof.

What it is good for: TrendsMap is a great way to get a helpful snapshot of the progress of a social media campaign, with a fun and simple interface to boot. (Take note other twitter-related tools… UI *is* important!)

Final thought: TrendsMap does not rise to the level of “must-have”, but it does rise to the level of “useful”.  While the data on this platform is not really exportable (for client presentations and reports), it does give you real-time insight into your campaign and can help you make the tweaks necessary to turn it around now. The folks at TrendsMap are always looking for users’ input on bugs to fix, but it’s not entirely clear whether they’re looking to expand the services offered here.  Stay tuned on that front. We certainly will.

In this week’s installment of Social Media Monday, we take a look at one of our favorite Twitter search tools, Twellow.

What it is: Twellow is a people search tool for Twitter, allowing you to connect with people of experience and expertise in your areas of interest.

What it does: Twellow collects publicly available tweets, analyzes them, and categorizes each of the users responsible for those tweets into various categories—art, food, travel, politics, etc. Think of Twellow as an online phone book directory for Twitter, which connects users “with people who matter.”

Get listed: Registering for Twellow is easy; all you need is a Twitter account. Just visit their new user page, enter your Twitter username and voila! Once registered you can modify your categorization on Twellow and create an extended bio.

Categories: With over 1 billion followers and 11 million Twitter profiles, Twellow has literally hundreds of categories, and search features, which make it easy for Twitter users to “cut through the clutter.”

Search Toolbar: By default, search results are sorted by number of followers, but can be filtered by utilizing Twellow’s advance search tips—allowing you to connect with Twitter’s true influencers.

Twellow Suggestions: Makes is easy for users to see other tweeple that are tweeting about similar areas of interest.

TwellowHood: This nifty feature allows you to locate tweeple in your neighborhood who you can connect with. Simply click on any state to zoom in for a list of people that are tweeting in your city.

What it is good for: Twellow serves as a one stop-shop for industry folks interested in identifying Twitter’s most influential tweeple–in any category.

An instant search lets you see the number of people tweeting about a certain topic (in our example, biotechnology), their last tweet, and how many followers they have.

At Brodeur, we regularly use Twellow to identify ‘who’s who’ among tweeple, particularly in recruiting ‘followers’ that share our clients’ views and would benefit from our messaging.

Moving Forward: What makes Twellow unique is the number of indexes and search categories it provides—it really is the ‘Twitter Yellow Pages.’ By providing a comprehensive directory of Twitter users, Twellow makes it easy for anyone to study a certain aspect of any market.

While Twellow does a good job at eliminating the clutter and spam found on Twitter, there is still room for improvement. For instance, new users are initially categorized by their Twitter bio, and not by the message conveyed in their tweets. You can always go back and change your bio on Twitter, or update your Twellow profile, but a categorization by tweet relevance would be helpful.

Also, similar search terms produce dissimilar results. For example, there are currently over 1,200 user profiles under the Biotechnology category, but only 228 matches for the search term “biotechnology” and 598 matches for “biotech.” A ranking algorithm in Twellow’s directory could help solve this issue and make it easier to identify relevant tweeple.

Interested in finding out the latest and greatest on Twellow? Or how this search tool can help drive your clients’ social media campaign? Then visit Twellow’s blog to remain up to date on new site developments.

Final thought: In an industry rapidly becoming synonymous with social media, Twellow is a must have for keeping track of industry influencers on Twitter. If you don’t have it, get it, and if you do have it, love it.

In our second installation of Social Media Monday, we’re taking a look at a long-time favorite resource of ours here at Brodeur Partners – Radian6.

What it is: Radian6.com is one of the tools necessary to break down conversations across social networks, websites and traditional media sites – offering the ability to see “big picture” trends or go as granular as you wish.

What it does: Track relevant conversations about your brand or topic, identify major influencers in your space, build quick and easy cloud tags, and monitor conversation volume and share of voice. Though these are some of our favorite ways of using Radian6, the service also provides other helpful monitoring tools:

Track the tone: Despite claims to the contrary, there is no solution yet for effectively tracking tone automatically. However, Radian6 provides a well-executed CMS to manually track positive/negative tone for an article, resultant comments or even a specific author

Integrate into outside feeds: RSS software makes integration easy for in-house desktop monitoring systems

Effortless UI when tracking specific topics and trends: Radian6 has made significant strides in improving its UI for agencies, giving you the ability to effortlessly move through the abundance of information at your disposal without getting lost

Drilling down by region, language and media type: Narrow your results by geography, languages and platform (even members-only forums)

Influencer Weightings: This allows you to prioritize your results based on what factors most dramatically affect your campaign

What it is good for: Based on our experience, Radian6 really does qualify as a full-service online monitoring tool – giving you multiple ways to slice and dice information, track trends and easily package reports for clients.

While Radian6 provides a great deal of information, it takes very little time to grasp how to use it (thanks to the great work on the system’s UI).  The ease of setting up a regular automated report system is particularly appealing when clients want to be more engaged and informed about what’s going on online.

In a real-life example, we regularly use this in new business pitches to quickly grasp the online landscape for potential clients.  Though you can drill down deeply, the ability to see trends emerging from a 30,000-foot level is also a compelling reason to use Radian6 as a “go-to” resource.

Moving Forward: Overall, Radian6 is a must-have for any agency serious about comprehensive tracking of social media trends. In part, because – unlike other services which often only provide a portion of the potential data cuts in Radian6 – this service uses actual internet traffic to drive its data. The alternative of extrapolating from online audience samples seems almost absurd in today’s online market where immediacy is often key to success.

When it comes to pricing, Radian6 offers substantial value… but with one caveat.  The pricing structure is based on flat-rate seats plus data volume.  So, for a relatively small client, you could easily pay the seat price ($100/month at present) and a $500 data stream fee. However, if you’re working on a Research In Motion or Coca-Cola, the data stream will almost certainly exceed the general pricing parameters, and you’ll need to negotiate with your customer representative.

…which brings me to the next point: customer service. As long-time users of Radian6, we remember when it seemed like it was a couple of guys out of their garage, and customer calls were addressed immediately. Given how comprehensive and user-friendly their software is, it’s not surprising they’ve grown tremendously since then… but the growing pains are apparent. If immediate responsiveness is an absolute must for you and your team, you may want to reconsider whether Radian6 is the right tool for you… at least until they sort out some of their staffing issues.

The Radian6 Blog is absolutely worthwhile. It offers useful insight on best practices – whether you’re a newcomer to the social media scene or a die-hard maven who’s been around since BBS’s.  How many times have you been asked how to handle negative online comments, for example? Well, here’s your answer.

Final thought: If you’re a data fiend, who needs the ability to dice apart social networking trends and present them in a client-friendly way, Radian6 is a must. For teams researching new business opportunities, even more so. However, before you build Radian6 into your budget, talk with one of their customer service representatives to get an estimate on what your monthly data feed will cost. Otherwise you may find an unwelcome surprise in your invoice box at the end of the month.

Every day billions of internet users employ Google as their primary search engine. Whether it is for work, play, or somewhere in between, we rely on Google as a pathway into the vast internet expanse. And we don’t solely use the search engine, do we? No way. We use Google’s many other services like Gmail, Google News, Google Reader, Google Scholar, Google Calendar, and the list goes on.

Most of Google’s apps require that we enter information so that Google can get appropriate search results or store that information for our later access (e.g. Gmail, Google Calendar). Google can then use this information to specifically tailor advertisements on our screen according to what we have entered. For example, I recently g-mailed some friends about going to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. I titled the message “Dark Knight tonight?” and received advertisements on the side of the screen for movie times, Batman t-shirts, Batman watches, and the soundtrack from the movie.

Social networking websites like Facebook do similar things. Enter a sports team under interests and you will get advertisements from sports gambling websites. You’re from Massachusetts? Be prepared for advertisements for apartments in Boston.

And it gets more advanced. Last year, a deal fell through that would have had Google and Earthlink providing the city of San Francisco free wireless internet in exchange for the location of users. This would have enabled Google to sell advertisements based on the users’ location in the city. Pass a movie theater and the trailer for the newest action flick flashes on your screen. Sitting at a coffee shop? Sip on the new and delicious caramel peanut butter chocolate latte supreme, venti sized!

On the one hand, this can be quite scary. Does Google know everything about me? My interests, my schedule, my personal e-mails, and soon, even my location?

The question is this: Is Google and other networks’ ability to compile huge amounts of data about internet users, and therefore consumers, a good thing or a bad thing? Like I said, this can be quite scary. On the other hand, I would much rather see advertisements for my favorite band’s new concert tour than advertisements for something I have no interest in. So, yes, internet data mining may be frightening, but, until new laws are passed on internet privacy (and who knows if that will ever happen), we must get used to it, embrace it, and perhaps use this the new age in marketing and advertising to our own advantage.