How to monitor online conversations

To build your online community, monitor blogs and become part of the conversation. 

How do you monitor blogs?

MarketingProfs has a useful "how-to guide" for blog marketing and in it has listed tools for monitoring blogs. 

• Technorati (www.technorati.com)
• Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/)
• IceRocket (www.icerocket.com)
• BlogPulse (www.blogpulse.com) 

My favourite one is BlogPulse, what do you recommend?