If you’re lost in terms of online marketing, you need to be able to first find opportunities which you can expand upon in terms of marketing. Don’t know how to start? The following tools will at least give you a good idea of what’s being said about your company or industry online, and where users spend their time:

• Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) emails you whenever a chosen
keyword (e.g., company or product name, CEO name, campaign tagline,
industry term, etc.) is mentioned in any form of online content.
• Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/) scans the blogosphere
for any keyword or phrase you type in.
• Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/) scans all Twitter posts for your
selected keyword or phrase.
• SiteVolume (http://www.sitevolume.com/) reports how often keywords or
phrases appear on Twitter, Digg, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.
• SocialMention (http://www.socialmention.com/) enables you to search
keywords and phrases by specific channel category (blogs, images, news,
video, etc.), or as a whole, and to receive email alerts when a new mention
is posted.
• Socialcast (http://www.socialcast.com/) offers real-time analytics on microblogging
and other social activities and identifies individual users’ level of
activity. Unlike most tools, it also can quantify the value of “lurkers” who
aren’t visibly posting comments, but by how often they frequent a site.

Take note of what’s being said about your company or whatever keywords you search, whether it’s positive, negative or neutral; what people
are passing along to friends; and if there are any particular needs or customer
segments that aren’t served. These are all opportunities for marketing…