It seems to me that one of the challenges with Free is that by varying keywords and doing some recursive searches you can find a lot more. In fact, you can find so much stuff that it is downright impossible to quantify into metrics that one feels comfortable saying are really indicative of the reality out there.

Free does seem to find the stuff that pops up in other people’s alerts. That in itself is another challenge – the impending contest for determining what counts and what doesn’t. Say, you get a spiffy new tool and begin to generate reports, and someone else does a random google searh and finds something you didn’t. One can get sucked into a debate about what is the the true nature of the blogosphere at any moment – how many posts are there really about you? Is the one someone else found counted in the results you have? Should it be?

Even if you go paid service, perhaps keeping some google alerts running may be beneficial in understanding what your exec team is seeing and will be reacting to (since many execs now have discovered google alerts themselves).

I echo Sean’s comments and welcome the 301 course myself. Using workflow to “attack the seams between bizunits” is a must have if one wants to really get at the value of what’s happenng online.

Is it possibly to connect what’s hapening both in front of and behind the firewall?

great post!

sean