PR Pros Collaborate on Online Monitoring Ideas

As public relations adapts to the opportunities and challenges of new media, the task of monitoring online activity becomes even more critical – and more daunting.

What should you monitor? For starters, consider the growing list over on The New PR/Wiki. It includes:

• Web fundamentals including company names, product names and accompanying URLs
• Industry “hangouts” such as discussion boards and blogs
• Tagging and search tools like Del.icio.us, Digg and Techmeme
• Keyword monitoring on major search engines
• Search term volume and rankings
• Relevant wikis

The thought of monitoring everything on this list will create a blogosphere-sized headache for most public relations professionals. And no doubt, leading monitoring services will ramp up to offer additional services, while other tech-focused competitors will join in.

What’s also noteworthy is how this list was created. As Shel Holtz notes here, it began with a blog post from Cameron Olthuis and expanded through posts from other bloggers. Shel then found a more suitable, wiki-based home for the collaboration. It’s a social media-focused list – created through social media channels.