It is in fact quit easy to do, all you need is a good RSS reader (such as the Google Reader) account, then:

• Go to Google News (http://news.google.com/), do a search on the keyword that you want to monitor, then subscribe to the RSS feed of that search result.
• Go to Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/), do a search on the keyword that you want to monitor, then subscribe to the RSS feed of that search result.
• Go to Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/), do a search on the you keyword, and then, again, subscribe to the RSS feed for that query.

… you get the idea…

You can certainly go to other search engines to catch all the rest as well, but after collecting all of the above three to read, you probably already feel that’s too much and may not want to care all that much about what everybody’s talking any more. 

Two examples of good use of such approach:

• There was a company using twitter as a real-time customer support channel, they direct everyone to follow them on twitter on updates, and they pro-actively offer support to anyone who talks about them there (even they are just talking to themselves not the service account) as well.  They generated great customer satisfaction that way.
• There are groups and companies using this method to monitor the media so that any potential PR issues can be discovered and addressed timely.

Design A

Design B

Design C

Please Vote:

http://www.techipedia.com/2009/internet-marketing-posts-2008/

http://www.techipedia.com/2007/internet-marketing-best-blog-posts/

An obvious example fo this principle is the advertising for Marlboro cigarettes. In spite of the fact that the ads show only cowboys smoking the brand, Marlboro has become the No. 1brand of cigarette, among women as well as men. The tactical target is not the strategic market.

Prospects don’t take your advertising personally. Rather, they extract from the message ideas and concepts that they can utilize in their own lives.

There are many products where the target is designed to be considerably different from the market.

“Seventeen” magazine has a name and editorial position targeted specifically at 17-year-old girls. But who reads “Seventeen”? Girls who are 13, 14, 15, and 16 years old. When a young woman grows up to be 17, she usually outgrows “Seventeen” magazine.

Virginia Slims is a cigarette whose target is liberated women and female swingers. Each ad shows a woman who is 25 and “with it”. but the market is the middle-aged woman who aspires to that lifestyle. The average Virginia Slims smoker is more like 45.

Both Virginia Slims and “Seventeen” appeal to aspirations and not reality.

When a car dealer says on TV, “We’re selling cars like crazy”, the viewers may say to himself, “they must think I don’t think they’re selling a lot of cars”.

So you should put your marketing messages under the implication microscope. Reserve the message and see if that is really what you want to imply.

• A trend usually involves slow change. A fad is like fashion: it usually starts much faster and ends more abruptly.
• A fad usually gets all the press, because it represents something that’s happening rapidly.Trends get much less press because they take place slowly.
• There are often fads heading opposite/different directions in the midst of a (long-term) trend.  (So watch out not to be fooled by those fads)

“One can formulate brilliant global strategies whose executability is zero. It’s only through familiarity with details — the capability of the individuals who have to execute, the marketplace, the timing — that a good strategy emerges.” (Andrews Grove, CEO of Intel)