One of the absolutely best things you can do with Twitter is listen. Even if you don’t ever say anything using the service, you can listen. In this post I’ve separated the tools out into two kinds of listening: General Listening and a specialized form of listening called reputation management.

Listening to Twitter for new trends and topics

I think pretty much any marketer (internet or traditional) will agree that knowing what everyone is talking about is useful. Usually you can use this information to try and position your product or service in relation to current events/trends/fads and so on. And the ability to position your offerings well is often the difference between success and failure in your marketing objectives. Here are some tools to help you do some general listening and monitoring of the Twittersphere

• Set Up Twitter to come to you as an RSS Feed (via Sellsius)
• Summize is a tool to search the Twittersphere.
• A short review of Twittervision.
• Joel Burslem, the real estate internet marketing guru, pointed out the Twist trendwatching application.
• Conversations go both ways and you usually profit more by listening. Time to read Jeff Turner’s Active Rain post about TwitterLocal.
• What’s TwitterLocal you ask? Look no further than PR 2.0 post “Twitter Local Connects You to Local Voices.”
• Alan Wolk has outlined a simple method for using Twitter to create a customized live news feed.

Twitter Tools for Reputation Management

A specific kind of listening, referred to as reputation management, involves listening specifically to what others are saying about you and/or your brand or company. It’s important to listen to this specific kind of chatter because you want to know if people are satisfied with your work. Using reputation management tools on Twitter allows you to quickly take action when someone is having a bad time (and telling the world about it). Also, if people are very happy with your work and talking to the world about it you can thank them for spreading the word about your business. Here are some tools to help you with reputation management via Twitter:

• AgentGenius Lani Anglin-Rosales has an excellent roundup of 10 Twitter Tools for Managing Your Reputation.
• How much are people talking about you, your business or your topics? You can measure it: Measuring the conversation.
• Joel Burslem’s Using Twitter to Listen to your Customers reviews the excellent Reputation Management tool TweetScan. Includes examples.
• Tweetbeep is a tool for keeping tabs on the chatter. Read the TweetBeep review at Sellsius.
• Determine your social media relevance on Twitter by measuring click-through rate on your Tweets.

If you’re looking for more tools and ways to use Twitter check out the Twitter for Business page. Feel free to use the comments to let me know what I missed.