You can do all the social networking, friending, tweeting, and emailing you want, but if you don't have a way to measure how you're doing, you can never be sure that what you're doing is working or not. This can lead to a lot of extra work, taking up the time that you'd normally use to do the thing that you really want to do - make music.
That's why measurement tools are so important. You can instantly see what kind of reach that you're having from your efforts so you can operate more efficiently. Here are 6 free tools that will give you a surprising amount of information. I personally use them all and find them extremely useful.
Google Alerts (google.com/alerts) - This service sweeps the web and sends you an email whenever it finds a mention of your designated keyword phrase or phrases (your band name, for instance). You'll be surprised where you show up.
Twitter Search (search.twitter.com) - Acts much like Google except that it searches Twitter for any keywords or phrases.
Hashtags.org - I posted about this the other day. It's different than Twitter Search in that it looks only at a keyword preceded by a hashtag (#). You can read my article for more info on hashtags.
Who’s Talkin (whostalkin.com) - This service looks at blogs, Twitter and the news for your keyword. It differs from Google Alerts in that it doesn't send you an email since it works more like a traditional search engine.
Stat Counter (statcounter.com) - I love this one. Once you register with them, they give you a piece of html code to put on your site or blog that then provides statistics about who visits. It seems a lot more accurate than what you get from the statistics of your website (and you don't get much in the way of statics for most blogs anyway), and the info is really granular in that you can almost drill down to see the very house of one of your visitors if you want.
Tynt Tracer (tynt.com) - This one's similar to Stat Counter, except that it traces images and text that’s been copied off your site. Once again, when you register they give you a piece of code to put invisibly on your site. If someone copies some text, a Creative Commons notification will come up with the paste, telling both the copier and his readers where the text came from and under what provisions that it can be used.
I'm sure that these aren't the only free measurement tools out there, but they're the ones I use every day and find useful. I'm sure you will too.
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