Tonight while I was going through some of the different social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook I decided to do a search on the name of the company I work for “TurnHere.” Now I do this regularly and automatically on Twitter and the Web. I use Google Alerts to monitor for TurnHere mentions on the Web (they’re pumped into my Google Reader), I have a column of Tweetdeck assigned just to listen for TurnHere in the Twitterverse and we have a paid subscription to Scout Labs for monitoring the brand.

But I hadn’t drilled down on Facebook search yet with the brand name and none of the above tools give you insight into that community. Talk about opportunity. The new and improved Facebook search is a gold mine for opportunities to connect with people who are talking about your brand or topic of interest. Previously, Facebook would only search people, names, events, pages and groups. But now that they have added status updates in the search it’s a whole new world.

Take a look at what I saw in the results for TurnHere (note that these are just my friends, you can also click on “Posts by Everyone” below the “Posts by Friends for a broader view, note you’ll typically only be able to interact or engage with your friends depending on people’s privacy settings):

Don is looking forward to his TurnHere shoot next week. That’s a great piece of information and an opportunity for me to engage with him around that. Is he feeling ready? Excited? Nervous? Can I answer any last minute questions for him? Or can I just give him a word of encouragement and let him know that we’re excited to see the finished video? All sorts of opportunities are there to create a meaningful connection with Don around his video shoot experience.

Or further down the page:

With Debbie I have the chance to help spread the word about her new video and also check in to see how everyone felt about the shoot and the finished product. The same for Cindy.

Lastly, notice the note from Paulo (who works with me at TurnHere) and the retweet posted to his Facebook profile about the kind words some gave about a recent speaking opportunity I had. This is a great find for me personally and allows me to reach out to that person and thank them and see if there is anything I can do to help them out as well. I am also able to add that kudo to my speaking page which will hopefully give people more confidence in extending speaking invitations to me and helping me grow that part of my career.

So now I know to make sure that Facebook search is a regular part of my brand and personal monitoring to catch more opportunities to interact with people talking about TurnHere.

For reference here are the tools that I use to monitor personal and brand mentions:

• Google Alerts (for Web mentions)
• Icerocket (for blog posts)
• Scout Labs (for comprehensive social media mentions, sentiment, etc.)
• Twitter search (for Twitter conversations)
• Facebook search (for Facebook status mentions, etc.)
• YouTube (for video search and comment search, comment search is a “Labs” product)
• LinkedIn Answers search

More than just brand mentions:

Obviously search goes just beyond monitoring brand mentions.  It can be used to find people talking about the things your company does or areas of interest to you personally.  It could be about events or needs or anything really.  Search across these networks is a powerful way to identify opportunities to make new connections and grow your influence, whether for your brand or yourself.

Check it out and let me know what your tips are for using search to build and strengthen your network!