Part of social media is monitoring your buzz. You want to know what people are saying about you. A great resource to use that will save you time is an RSS feed which stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. You can use RSS in so many ways and they will help you save time by creating automations that will work for you and not against you.

Setting up your RSS reader is easier then you may realize. Follow these steps and you’ll be monitoring your social media in no time:

Set up a Google Reader Account – Any website that has an RSS feed can be tracked with your Google Reader, which by the way is free. You will however, need a Google account. As a side note, it might be advisable to set up a separate Google account to monitor your social media with. It’s also advisable to have one Google account for each niche in your business. This makes it easier to keep track of your social media for each area.

Set up Google Alerts – You’ll want to use keywords that are relevant to your niche. When setting your delivery option, be sure to set it to feed instead of email. Take heed that you may need to edit the feed in order to get it set up this way. Now simply click create. You want to set up an alert for each keyword, key phrase, business name as well as any other unique phrases that you may use on your website and/or blogs.

RSS feeds are going to simplify the way you monitor the buzz for all your niches and your business name as well. The best part is you’ll be able to do it all with one glance on a single page. If you use a virtual assistant you can actually have them set this all up for you and monitor it a few times a day. By having them send you a daily report of anything important that happens, you’ll stay on top of your social media buzz.

Dig a little deeper by using Twitter Search to add a Twitter feed to your Google Reader. By adding your keywords and then clicking on “Feed for this query”, you’ll be able to monitor what’s being said about you on Twitter.