The best social media monitoring tools
A regular topic for discussion on the LinkedIn social media groups is “which are the best social media monitoring tools”. This brings me to my next post and the monitoring tools that have worked best for me.
Before implementing your social media plan of action, it is imperative to first ‘listen’ to your audience or market and the overall perception of your company/brand. However, with so many people now expressing their views on social networking sites, it could take much time and effort to ‘listen’ effectively without the right software. That being said, there are now several monitoring tools available that help you cope with engagement, measurement and metrics. Here are two that I have tried and tested.
As the social dashboard has just reached 3 million users, Hootsuite is one of the most popular monitoring tools. The dashboard integrates social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, WordPress and Foursquare. It provides you with stats based on brand alerts and suggests advice on how to improve brand visibility.
Like anything, it works best when you pay more i.e. for the VIP package. For the smaller companies that can’t afford the hefty price tag, there’s a ‘Basic’ option for free and a ‘Pro’ option priced at $5.99. However, it only gives you a free month trial on the ‘Pro’ option and requires you to enter your credit card details first…which I dislike!
After using Hootsuite I have found that the dashboard is fairly easy to use and allows you to add as many social media profiles as you like, although the reporting element is fairly limited which is why I feel that the ‘Pro’ option would best suit a small business or for self promotion. The price for the ‘Enterprise’ option jumps up to $210 and is still quite limited on the reporting aspect with only 10 free reports.
I really enjoyed using this social dashboard and still use it for monitoring my personal networking accounts.
Again, like Hootsuite the monitoring dashboard integrates with Twitter, Facebook Fanpages, LinkedIn, Foursquare and other networks where customers are engaging with brands.
I particularly like the simplicity of use and the metrics system which is available to use without an additional cost.
The web application offers three different plans ranging from “Small Biz” to “Deluxe” that all provide a free month trial… without adding any card details, which I think is a huge plus!
Here are a few other social media monitoring tools that the big PR/digital companies are using at the moment:
Radian 6 – Popular
Useful tools for monitoring the news online:
Digital PR 