Which Social Media Monitoring Tool?

English: 2011 at Paris in with Français : Cloudforce 2011 at CNIT Paris la défense with Loïc Le Meur (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Which social media monitoring tools do I use?  Businesses face this decision after devising their social media strategy.  Businesses and organisations should design a social media monitoring strategy to measure and lead to your desired goals and aims.  It’s essential in building Awareness (Exposure), Sentiment, Influence and Engagement.

All businesses and organisations should use a social media measuring tool.  The main issue is the cost of these tools and value for money.  Which ones for the business?

For paid social media measuring tools:

Image via CrunchBase

• Radian6 – This Salesforce tool can be integrated with Salesforce and Google Analytics.  It’s one of the leading monitoring tools in the United States.
• Brandwatch – It’s European dominance is due to search and translation of various content in various languages.  Allows 5 yrs of history for reviewing and improving campaigns.  Offers 30 day contract for commitment phobes.
• Meltwater Buzz – Can translate up to 27 languages, the most of any tool.  A stand out feature is that it can segment topic and theme mentions.  Has a history of a year.  A draw back is that the yearly sign up.

The tools cost depends on the level of service and features you want.  These aren’t all the tools, but these offer value for money.  They also offer monitoring and data analysis of paid and organic traffic.

When determining your paid monitoring tool, please consider these following points.   Is it easy to set up and to use?  How much time will I need to spend on monitoring and data analysis?  What level of help and support is on offer?  What features do I need now and will grow with my business needs?  Will languages be a future problem?  What’s its reach in monitoring and listening on social media?  Is there real-time interaction?

Image via CrunchBase

For free social media monitoring tools:

• Hootsuite – The best known free social media measuring tool.  Can incorporate Facebook Insights and Google Analytics (need to pay).  Allows you to send messages to your online audience making it a very handy tool.
• Social Mention – The keyword tracking assigns a positive, neutral or negative sentiment to the mention.  Has real-time tracking and custom social media alerts.
• Wildfire Monitor – This application allows you insights to grow your social media fan base on social networks.  It’s alert system notifies meaningful trends and any activity that relates to your social presence.  Recently bought by Google and could be added to Google+.  Google may also integrate it with Google Analytics and Adwords.
• Google Alerts – This sends alerts to your Gmail account.  It’s easy to set up the alert and you can filter the alert frequency.  I like how you can actually monitor developing news stories and keep up to date on industry or competitors.

Create a Google Alert (Photo credit: Ari Herzog)

There are more tools, but I’ve selected these from a small business point of view.  They have a unique offering, by combining them together you’ll be able to see the benefit.  Take it to the next level, by adding Google Analytics (it’s free) and Google Adwords (paid marketing campaigns) to help measure and lead you to your goals and aims.

These tools are handy in getting the basic understanding on monitoring social media sites.  Small businesses should use a combination of these free tools.  If you have technology phobia, then I suggest to keep it simple.  Use easy and simple tools like Social Mention and Google Alerts.  It’s very basic and doesn’t involve data analytics.  What free tools would you suggest to a small business owner?

Related articles

• 54 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools [Update 2012]  by Priit Kallas (dreamgrow.com)
• Best Social Media Monitoring Review (toptenreviews.com)
• A Comparison of Social Media Monitoring Tools: The Search for the Holy Grail by Diedre Drews

About Christopher Seeto

A Brand Enhancer in Communications. I fit naturally with technology, curious about science and avid consumer of news to gain insights. You can follow me on Google+ , LinkedIn , Twitter .