Facebook is launching an online campaign to celebrate reaching 500m global users.

Facebook Stories will be a visual representation of members’ stories about how the social network has impacted their lives. The site will sit within Facebook, with users able to filter stories by date or theme, such as ‘coping with grief’, ‘finding love’ and ‘natural disasters’.

Randi Zuckerberg, marketing director at Facebook, said:

“As we anticipate our 500m milestone, we wanted to find a different way to announce and celebrate it. In the past it has been all about the numbers and milestones, and we realised we had never taken the opportunity to celebrate users.”

Members can already submit stories in the User Stories part of the site.

Any negative bit of searchable content on the web could have a hugely negative impact on your brand, from a mainstream news article on the Guardian, right through to a forum comment or an isolated tweet.  In this new social media world, control lies in the hands of the consumer, and companies need to adapt accordingly. Whilst this lack of control can be disconcerting, timely and appropriate responses to consumer conversation online can be hugely rewarding.

However, before you try to talk to converse with your consumers online (how best to do that will be another blog post!), you need to know what is being said about you, and preferably, in real time. Social media/online PR agencies (including us!) will be able to perform ongoing quantitative and qualitative online audits for you as part of their services, to provide you with an in-depth understanding of your online presence and reputation.  However, there are some tools available online, which can give you a topline snapshot of this.

With this in mind, we have collated a list of five free tools to help you monitor conversations about your brand.  If you try any of these out, let us know what you think!

1. Google Alerts

We’re not going to dwell on this one, but suffice to say that anyone who hasn’t got Google alerts set up for their company/products is missing a serious trick. Simple to do, simple to manage.

2. TweetBeep

TweetBeep is a great way to get up to the hour alerts on hot topics of your choice direct from the twittersphere. Self-dubbed Google alerts for Twitter, it works very much in the same way; picking up on key words or phrases as and when they are tweeted about. TweetBeep allows you to create up to ten ‘beeps’ per account before there is a charge for the service, however once you have used your ten alerts on one account, there is nothing stopping you setting up another!

TweetBeep is a Twitter application set up by Michael Jensen (twitter.com/mdjensen), who has also developed a number of other twitter tools, including LiveTwitting.com and TweetAnswers. It is not affiliated with Twitter.com.

3. Collecta

Collecta monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media, in real time. You can either search the entire social web through Collecta, including blogs, Twitter, flickr, YouTube etc, or you can filter the search, so that it only delivers comments, updates (twitter etc),or photos. We have to say, this tool isn’t particularly useful for brands/companies which don’t generate a lot of chatter, but it is quite useful for searching hot topics, emerging news stories,  or well known personalities or brands.

4. BoardReader

Boardreader scans online forums and communities for chatter about your brand. As well as providing search results for your chosen key words, Boardreader will also plot this chatter over time to illustrate the ebbs and flows in conversations.

The best feature about Boardreader, we think, is that you can compare up to three key words at a time, which is a great way to compare the level of conversation about your company with that of competitors. However, Boardreader is by no means definitive; it doesn’t scan every forum out there! So if you know of forums important to your business, it worth looking at those forums and doing additional searches.

5. Social mention

Social mention is a new tool, similar to Connecta, and we must admit, we are just trying this one out too!. It is a “social media search platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.

It allows you to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc”.

Similar to Tweet Beep and Google Alerts, you can also set up social mention alerts to find out what people are saying about you as soon as it happens.  Not sure what we think about this tool yet; we will let you know in a couple of weeks.

So, what do you think of all these tools? Or do you have your own favourites? Let us know!

Despite priding themselves on conducting customer surveys offline for many years, banks have found it difficult to harness the ‘two-way’ nature of social media and actively engage with customers online. Historically this could have been a result of the stigma attached to discussing personal finances in public, but much of this has been removed by the arrival of the ‘comparison’ sites and money forums.  More recently, as this has been a tough year for the banks, (irrespective of who is to blame) some have steered well clear of the social media arena, through fear of being pilloried. All, that is, save one.

Perhaps recognising that there is a natural synergy between their business model and social networking, First Direct – the internet-only bank – have tackled consumer participation head-on, creating an environment on their site for customers and non-customers to post their thoughts on the bank and its service-provision. This is unquestionably a pioneering move. Most in the financial services industry have tried to avoid this form of customer interaction owing to an ill-placed preconception in the minds of brand-owners that social media has an inherently negative angle (with people only posting when they are unhappy). By hosting a forum for discussion, crucially stating that they cannot respond, First Direct have roundly disproved this thought-process. Yes, there are negative comments, but First Direct see the value in this feedback.

Consumer admiration and customer loyalty can be difficult commodities to acquire in the financial services industry. However First Direct have taken considerable steps to achieve both (with first-rate feedback thrown-in). By directing the ‘chatter’ that takes-place on the internet and bringing it in-house, not to moderate it, but to accept that people’s buying decisions are increasingly influenced by their ‘peer group’, First Direct have taken a brave, but most-likely rewarding step. Somewhat appropriately, the move can be best summed-up by one of the existing posts: ‘I am impressed both with the innovative concept of this, and the willingness of some customers to ‘defend’ their bank against criticism. Not many brands I have experience of have achieved that.’

Fortune Favours the Brave…