Well, I know this is an isolated incident and overly dramatic. But, if this story about an Alabama Teacher Accused of (a) Sex, Murder Plot doesn’t offer a test case for school systems and state boards of education (or any organization or business) to monitor online communication – nothing does.

I created this to share with teachers, online-newbie communicators and students. The genesis for this idea came from posts by Kami Huyse at Communication Overtones and Josh Hallett’s “How Can You Not Google Yourself?” post. Both are on reputation management and search. Great posts. Check them out. I’ve just adapted my little tutorial for a quick post.

It was easy to set up a few RSS blog searches to see how bloggers, news sources and many other information sources (social media/WOM) may be talking about this story.

If are not familiar with RSS (Really Simple Syndication), RSS readers and RSS Search aggregators, here’s one way to do it. There are *many* ways to do this, I’m just sharing this one because it is relatively simple. And, once you are through with this, you may use this process to track all sorts of RSS feeds.

First, you need to get the Firefox Web Browser. It is free and easy to use. The saying goes, “Once you try Firefox, you’ll never go back (to Internet Explorer).” We’ll see if that holds true with the next edition of Explorer.

OK, now – using Firefox browser – go get the Sage feedreader extension. This is essentially a free plugin that allows you to read RSS feeds. You will click on the “Install” link at the top of the page and then click the “click here to install” on that page. Now, you must close/exit Firefox and restart the browser.

Done? Now, you’ll need to create a new tab in Firefox (press Ctrl+T on your keyboard). How cool, huh? Tabbed browsing in Firefox. This allows you to keep these instructions and bounce back and forth from here to the feeds. Next, select the new blank tab in your browser and go up to your browser’s top menu. Click on “View” to select “Sidebar” and then slide down to “Sage.” A sidebar frame will open up in your browser window. You are ready to import OPML files or create new bookmarks to the feeds on your favorite sites.

Hang with me, we are almost done. Next, you can download these sample OPML files which I created at Monitor This. Here are the files:

• Right-click on the links and choose “Save Link As…”
  and save it to your desktop.
• Coffeeville
• Coffeeville High School
• Sharon Rutherford (the teacher)

Got ‘em? Good. Now, you just need to import them into your Sage reader. So, in your Sage sidebar, click on “Options” and slide down to “OPML Import/Export…” to import each file one at a time. Each time you import one of the files a folder will appear in your Sage reader’s sidbar top box. Click that folder and see all the sources drop down. Click one source at a time and they will appear in the larger browser window to the right for you to find the links to various articles, blog posts and news items. Some sources provide excerpts and others provide the entire story.

Kinda scary, isn’t it? That is a lot of people talking about Coffeeville. Hundreds and hundreds of blog posts. Hundreds more instances of reprinted AP stories. Dozens of individual news sites – TV and print – with their stories. Folks, Coffeeville is a small town and a small school with only a little over 100 students. Now, apply that to a metropolitan area with a school having 1,000+ students and you get the point. Blog savvy kids will write about their school and others will write about your problems, too.

One idea – by schools, for example – might be to create searches like these for your school (or schools) name(s) and also put in promintent figures like superintendents, principals, board members, etc. Stack them all up in the Sage sidebar and check them daily or weekly. I bet it will open your eyes to online WOM (word-of-mouth). It may also help you catch something being written about you that needs to be watched further, or tackled before it snowballs. Businesses can do this, too. Think of it as a 30 to 60 minute investment that can pay off every day.

If nothing else, this serves as an example of online WOM and how you can track it – about any key term or phrase.

Update: From Slashdot, here is one more example of the tracking that is going on from MSNBC.

My next post will likely be about Eric Eggerston’s latest find – a “Blog-based Fund-raising Campaign” called Blogidarity. Thanks, Eric. Looks like a very interesting idea.