Keen business owners know that monitoring social media for mentions of their brand is a great way to not only find out what people are saying about their products or services but also a means to engage with customers and prospects. While you can use one of the many social CRM platforms ^[1] available, I recently stumbled upon a simple tool for answering questions that people are asking on Twitter about your brand or about other topics you care about.

InboxQ is a free browser plugin that automatically scans Twitter for questions. So let’s say your business is consulting and you’re a software expert. In a matter of seconds you can set up campaigns to look for key words such as “software” or “Microsoft.” InboxQ then delivers to you all the questions people are asking on Twitter–as they are posted–that include those terms.

The tool is also good for people who InboxQ calls “thought leaders,” or people who simply want a way to share their knowledge and engage with others around topics in which they’re interested. For instance, I created a campaign with the key words “Google,” and not surprisingly lots of people have questions about the search engine giant, such as “Google AdSense – What is it?” or “What’s the play for Google giving out free Chrome books on Virgin flights? Branding? Data? Targeted user testing?”

Having access to questions delivered in real time about topics you care about is a fantastic diving board for engaging with others, whether you want to do it to increase your brand awareness or just spark interesting conversation on Twitter–something that some people find difficult to do.

Inboxq is currently available as an extension at the Chrome Web Store ^[2], a FireFox Add-On ^[3], or a Seesmic Plugin ^[4]. For more information, visit InboxQ ^[5].