By Amanda Smyth Connor

Before starting any new writing project, you need to do your homework. Any new client will either enjoy or demand the added benefit of linking and keyword usage, and not everyone has the money to spend on high-end social media tools like Radian6.

SocialMention.com is a good place to start for keyword research. It’s free to use and will get you off and running in terms of weighing the strength of the brand you are writing about, or narrowing down the subject matter that you are tackling.

Here’s how to start:

Let’s use “diapers” as an example.

1.  Go to SocialMention.com and type in “diapers.”

2.  For the sake of this trial run, adjust your search results to reflect the time period as being “one day,” but you can track back as far as one month.

3.  Now that you have searched “diapers,” you will see your search results on the left hand side of the screen, as well as a running timeline of live mentions from Twitter and Facebook.  You will see a variety of results that estimate the strength of “diapers” as a keyword and search term, such as:

• The word “diapers” is mentioned online every 21 seconds, on average.
• The information sentiment surrounding “diapers” is strongly neutral but this word is also often used positively.
• You can view a list of the top keywords used in conjunction with diapers, with “baby” as the most often used keyword and “wings” (a feature in some adult diapers) as the second most commonly used term associated with diapers. (Oddly enough, when I started writing this blog post a few days ago, “porn” was the number 3 result on this list of terms associated with diapers. What??)
• You can also view the top hashtags associated with diapers (“moms,”) and the top sources where this word is mentioned most frequently (Twitter.)

4. You can continue to investigate what social media users are saying about “diapers” by clicking along the top navigation bar. You can then view results within specific sources, like microblogs, comments, images, news, etc. This way, you can see what people really think about diapers…and it just might surprise you! (I’m kidding. It’s pretty much what you would expect.)

5. Now that you have a good overview of the buzz on diapers, you can dig deeper by investigating specific brands (“Pampers diapers,” “Luvs Diapers,” “cloth diapers,” etc) so that when you do start your writing project, not only do you know what keywords are being used heavily in support of your content, but you will have a better understanding of your product and how it is perceived by users.

By using this tool, you’ll give yourself a leg up on the research end of your project, and you can tack this simple leg work on as part of your overall billable hours, or you can use it as added value to impress your clients…and BLAMO! You can call it a day and put on your “Team Awesomesauce” jacket. You earned it.

Amanda Smyth Connor is a social media manager for a major publishing company, owns her own wedding planning business and has managed online communities and content development for many start-up and Fortune 500 companies.  She has been a professional editor for more years than she can remember.