One way to get people talking about your products is to start the conversation yourself. Then, just sit back and listen.

That’s what consumer goods giant, Procter & Gamble, did with their mother-driven community space, Vocalpoint. Vocalpoint provides product discussions and lifestyle advice for thousands of women and homemakers- the target user of most of P&G’s products. The site frequently offers free samples and coupons for P&G products (e.g. Tide to Go Instant Stain Remover ) as well as other partnering companies.  In return, users weigh in on the products and share experiences with their friends, family, and other Vocalpoint members.

P&G’s role is limited, and somewhat veiled, but they gain more as a fly on the wall than as an active participant. Instead of spending a fortune to track perspectives on each brand, now they have a vehicle that can be used to track attitudes and perspectives across categories and brands.

The real take-away here is how easy it is to utilize web-based, community tools to create a virtual panel (PDF) to gain insight and drive word of mouth. Much of Vocalpoint’s success lies outside the site, as “connectors” (social butterflies, who are likely to share product information and make recommendations) spread the word. Of course, the free samples don’t hurt either.

It’s hard to keep track of what your competitors are doing when they’re investing in marketing and selling materials that live both online and offline. However, you might want to think about pulling everything you know about a competitor into one place online (yes, instead of that file folder that you’re never going to dip into ever again).

You can do just that with a service like Pixily. Pixily can convert your competitors print ads, selling materials, or anything into an online document repository. Here’s how it works- Pixily provides you with pre-paid envelopes, similar to Netflix. Periodically mail all your important competitor or tracking documents - ads, selling materials, promotions, new packages- to Pixily. The service will scan and upload your documents to your account, where you can view, search, share, or download them later Pixily.  It will then mail your documents back to you, free of charge. Everything is securely saved and stored online, so you can choose whether to file the hard copies away, discard, or recycle.

Alternatively, you can scan your own documents and upload them to your Pixily account. The system accepts PDF’s and all Microsoft documents. Your online Pixily account is your document management hub. Quickly identify each document by the oversized thumbnails provided or do a quick search to locate a specific piece. You can also organize and group your documents into categories (e.g. Client Contracts) to create a virtual filing cabinet.

Pixily offers a range of pricing tiers to accommodate both small and large business. For $60/month, you receive 4 prepaid envelopes and a document capacity of 12,000 sheets. The free account gives you access to the Pixily file management system, but you are responsible for postage and can only store 200 pages. The service also offers a 30-day, risk-free trial.

So, go ahead and give it try. You’ve got nothing to lose, except all of that filing.

Public perception (and prediction) can be that little extra that helps you get a competitive edge in the market. However, few forums exist where you can hang your theories out there and let the people weigh in.

Consider using Hubdub as a tool for marketing insights. Hubdub is a mashup between a news aggregator and fantasy sports league- users discover or suggest news stories, post a question, then let the community predict the outcome by wagering a bet (Hubdub dollars, that is). Questions can be about any news topic you choose, provided the question is objective and likely to be settled through the natural course of events (e.g Who will win the next U.S. Presidential Election?).

Hubdub categories include Sports, Politics, Entertainment, Business, Technology, and so on. A casual glance at the Technology category displays questions regarding the launch of Google TV, Facebook’s IPO, and best blogger on Playboy’s website. You can browse the most discussed topics in the Hot Tags section or post your own question to the community and let the bets begin. HubDub is a prediction market - basically, the current “price” of an outcome is determined by the number of people selecting the outcome and the amount the have wagered on it. Although Hubdub administrators call the end of the bet, a question is often settled by public knowledge or the actual course of events.

Hubdub is not an absolute, but it is a great tool for measuring public sway. So whether you’re sourcing competitive intel, monitoring market trends, or just want to make a wager, this site is worth a look.

One of the best ways to get feedback from your customers is to ask them to participate in a survey. Unless you are living in the dark ages, you probably know that surveys have gone digital. Unfortunately, many services make you pay by the survey or, gulp, the question.

Not so with LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey is an open source survey software that offers unlimited surveys and control over the design and functionality of the questionnaire. Check out the demo. Limesurvey has a many features- here are the highlights:

• unlimited number of questions
• unlimited participants
• open/closed group participants
• multi-lingual
• 20 different question types, including conditional questions
• picture and video integration
• invitations and reminders
• template editor
• easy import/export of raw data (CVS, PDF, Excel, etc)

LimeSurvey is a free download, but you will need to install the software on a server with PHP 4.2 and a MYSQL database to store all your LimeSurvey information. While it may sound confusing, it is a straight-forward installation for a web developer.

Bottom line, a survey tool like LimeSurvey is an easy source for perspective (and intelligence) on your business relationships. There’s no need to stay in the dark.

Although the iPhone lets you surf the web with a regular browser, despite the hype, most of the world is not on a smartphone. It’s still a good idea to make your site mobile-friendly.

A service called Mofuse (short for mobile fusion) will create a mobile version of your website or blog in a matter of seconds. Technically, it’s an RSS feed with mobile-friendly packaging, but all your readers will notice is the fact that they can browse your site from their hand-held device. To get started, enter your url or RSS feed into the Mofuse mobilizer (found on their homepage). The system will generate a custom .mobi url (check out http://feedgrowth.mofuse.mobi on your phone) and prompts you to create an account. Your new mobile site launches immediately and through your account administration panel, you can customize the design of your site, add your logo, or switch your mobile site to your own domain.

Mofuse already counts feed growth favorites!, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable, as users. The company recently discarded their old subscription-based business model to focus on developing a mobile advertising network, which they hope to release later this year. This means you get the Mofuse mobile platform for free, including site analytics and customer support.

While there’s a great deal of data to be gathered from any website, there’s often a distinct shortage of real insight. In other words, sure you can see that people are leaving the site, but you usually have to just guess at the reason why. That’s why it can be important to give you customers different opportunities to provide their opinion or interact on your site.

One way to create just such an opportunity for interaction is to install a plug-in like Firef.ly. It’s a simple chat program that operates on the surface of your website. Visitors can communicate with each other through tiny chat bubbles that can be placed at points of interest. As an administrator, you can be an active participant in the conversation or a fly on the wall, just there to observe.

The firef.ly plugin is easy to install and appears as a simple toolbar at the bottom of your page. From here, chatters can access the site’s chat log or customize their chat persona with an avatar. Chatting is completely opt in and users don’t have to download anything to start talking. You never know what you might learn.

If you’re launching a new product or service, it can be tough to gain insight into your targeted user. One way to do it is to find information about other sites that you would assume your target would use.

One way to do that is to use a service like Quantcast. Quantcast is a free internet ratings system, generating traffic statistics and audience make-up for millions of registered web sites and blogs. The system measures visitor characteristics like gender, age, ethnicity, education, and income, as well as popularity and frequency of your site and any featured media. Quantcast is able to do this by blending panel-based estimates (sampling a small portion, then extrapolating larger data) and direct information from “tagged” sites.

If you don’t have a large site or one that’s already been tracked, you can simply use this service to identify a large, but similar site. You’ll find all sorts of interesting demographic and tracking information that you can then use to inform your own decisions.

To join the fun (and have your site added to the database), submit your url and site description to Quantcast, stipulating what information you would like to be public. The system will generate a personalized tag to be placed in your website code and any flash-based media you would like to measure, whether it’s a video, widget, or game. Quantcast will begin measuring your site immediately, providing metrics like play and reach for your media, even if it’s served on sites other than your own.

Twitter (see Stay close to Mother Hen) is a micro-blogging site that’s easy to use from just about anywhere - by phone or computer. It has been embraced by a segment of the tech savvy population. What you may not know is that it’s also a potential source of information about your brand, depending on your target.

TweetBeep is a simple tool that will let you monitor the conversation among the digerati. Are they talking about you or your competitor? Is there something important happening in your marketplace that you need to know about? All you need to do is sign up, choose your targeted key words, and then you’ll be notified if they’re among the “tweets” of the day.

It’s a simple, free investment that could keep you ahead of the crowd.

There’s really no reason that you can’t stay up to date with who’s talking about your brand. You can be on your way in about 15 seconds.

Just create a series of brand related alerts using Google Alerts. Enter your terms (try your most important brands), select what you would like to search, and then choose the frequency of reporting. If you’re looking to stay on top of what bloggers are saying, just choose blogs or the comprehensive alert. For example, I have created an alert for this blog. I receive a notification about fifteen minutes after a new post has been released.

With an alert set for your brand (or just about anything), you can be certain that you’re getting the latest word from the blogosphere. It’s a great way to avoid surprises (and no doubt look smarter than everyone who’s not quite so alert).

Thanks to Ethnio, you can pose the question(s) to people who are already coming to your site. With this free service, all you need to do is add a little snippet of code to your site. Then, when a visitor comes along, it will create a popup screener (yes, one of those things that slides along and tries to get you to participate in a survey or marketing research). Wait - these screeners are not entirely loathsome and it turns out that many people actually participate. Depending on the incentive, wouldn’t you know?

This service lets you create screening questions and then serve them up to separate the desired from the undesirable participant. Then it’s up to you to figure out what you’re going to do, now that this free service has given you so many potential respondents. Don’t you think you have something that you would like to ask your site visitors … beyond hot or not?

While 2001’s Hal is still the best lip reader, Facebook’s Lexicon gives you a new vehicle for tracking trends. It works in very much the same way as Google’s trend reading tool, but instead of looking at searches, it counts the number of occurrences of every term across profiles, groups and event Walls every day. All you have to do is put in two terms separated by comma and you’ll get an instant read on who’s winning the buzz war.

Wondering how your brand is resonating with Facebook users? Here’s a good way to find out (oh, and it’s free, of course).

Every website generates a mountain of data. Every visit, every click can be recorded, then sifted, analyzed, and parsed. Oh, you can find out what your visitors are doing.

Just not why they’re doing it. To do that, you have to ask them. That’s the need served by 4Q. It’s a free, 4 question survey tool. When visitors arrive at your site, they are presented with an invitation to participate in a survey after their session. If they accept, a second, minimized window, which contains the survey itself, is launched and waits in the background for the visitor to complete the site visit (see the overview video).

Sign up, create your survey, generate the survey code, place it on your site, and then you’re ready to go. Go on. Don’t you want to know more about why your site visitors do what they do?