Once you’ve got your startup launched and running, you’ll want to know what people are saying about it. Let’s face it, the kind of publicity a company gets can make or break a product launch and also can serve to get investors interested if that is what you are after. Whether the buzz is out on social media channels like Twitter or it’s been floating through the blogosphere, your business will be better off when it’s aware of public sentiment surrounding it.

But what tools can you use to do this? Especially that are more aimed towards startups. Here are some tools that you can use for watching buzz building about your startup.

Netvibes: An all-in-one social media and marketing tool providing analytics, customer engagement tools, buzz monitoring, and more.

Spy: Spy is a useful little tool that monitors social media conversations from all over the web, reading from services such as Flickr, Google Readeer, Twitter, blogs etc. So in short, it’s a search engine and you can use it for free!

Ubervu: Lets you monitor and analyze the buzz

SocialAppsHQ: Social media monitoring, actionable analytics, engagement tools, viral apps and so much more in one easy-to-use platform. It also helps you run viral campaigns

HootSuite: HootSuite is THE social media dashboard. It isn’t site specific, meaning it doesn’t work with just Facebook or Twitter. You can manage most social media profiles from one single place, and use features such as auto publish, mass update, scheduled feeds etc. The full functionality isn’t free, however, which is perhaps the biggest drawback of this awesome tool.

TweetDeck: TweetDeck is a Twitter Dashboard where you can create filters and arrange feeds to learn about a topic in detail. Additionally, you can schedule your Tweets ahead of time. Furthermore, it allows you to generate reports on keywords, and mentions etc.

Beevolve: Monitors blogs, social networks & video platforms. Offers sentiment analysis, Geographic analysis & competitive analytics. They have a separate package for startups at a cheaper price .

ReputeMe: Watch your brand, track the competition, connect with current and potential customers, manage your social media profiles and more, from one single place.

Radian 6: A division of salesforce.com that offers a platform to “listen, measure and engage” with customers across the social web. They’ve got some big clients too, including Microsoft, GE, Dell, and UPS, to name a few.

Brand Monitor: Another action-oriented platform that helps you “listen, discover, and engage with blogs, social media, and news in real-time.” Like Radian6, this one’s suitable for more established companies.

Simplify360: Lets you monitor Twitter, FB, Blogs, News, Forums and videos.

Addict-o-matic:  A unique monitoring solution that creates a custom web page with “the latest buzz on any topic. This page includes things like search engine hits, photos, video, blog searches, and more.

Social Mention: A neat little free search tool that lists mentions of a topic across the web along with analytics like strength, sentiment, passion, reach, and more.

Google Alerts: Used to send alert emails to your inbox when one of the search engine’s crawlers catches a mention of your alert phrase. Set up alerts for your name, your company, your product, or whatever you want.  Be warned that despite Google’s general amazing’ness, Google Alerts are not necessarily comprehensive or timely.  So if a negative review comes in and you’re relying on Google Alerts, you may not hear about it as soon as you’d like.

Google Trends : Is best used to compare search hits for things over time. For example, compare yourself to a competitor in your space.

Actionly: Social Media Monitoring & Listening Platform

Are there any other tools you’d recommend which you use to monitor your startup’s buzz?  If yes, leave them in the comments and we’ll add them to this list over time.