Social Media Monitoring Tools

There are numerous ways to monitor and measure social media and its efforts in an organization. Three tools that I value and see great importance in are:

1) Yahoo Pipes: This tool allows you to mash up your content feeds. It allows you to combine and remix content from online. Pipes allows you to manipulate content from the web and collect it in an easy and simple manner. The commands can be combined to create an output that meets your needs.

Yahoo Pipes is valuable to measuring a social media web program because it allows you to track your brand or product mentions through several social media sites, which provides a clearer picture and greater understanding of your brand/product as a whole. Pipes also allows you to combine several feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate it, which is a great way to 'manipulate' the content. Pipes allows you to monitor multiple feeds and obtain alerts when feed activity meets a certain activity threshold, keeping you continuously updated and current in relation to activity involving your brand/product.

2) Addict-O-Matic: This tool allows you to instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on any topic. It is like a "one-stop shop" that allows you to see an analysis of the impact your brand/product has throughout the social web (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr,etc). It collects all the information and processes it into one single webpage.

Addict-o-matic is valuable in measuring a social media web program as it allows you to see all the activity of your brand/product on the web in one webpage, which is an asset when trying to get a full perspective of your brand/product and the climate of it's presence in the social web. It can also allow you to see who is talking about your brand/product, what they are saying and allows you to easily access this information with a keyword search.

3) Google Trends: This tool can be used to see the impact bloggers or a campaign has on a brand. It allows to measure the level of interest, over a period of time, over various geographic spaces.

Google Trends can be valuable in measuring a social media web program as it allows you to see the effect your brand/product has over a large georgraphic space, which provides a larger picture of the impact it has on people throught the world. It allows for keyword searches, which provides a more precise and specific collection of data, that can allow you to better understand the impact your brand/product has in what it is you are trying to determine/analyze. This tool organizes the data in regions, for instance "Hot Searches (USA)". This precise categorization allows you to exactly pinpoint where and by whom your brand/product is being discussed, which can give you a better understanding of how your product is discussed in specific areas.

4) Trackur: This is a paid tool that allows you to manage your online reputation and is a social media tool. It provides you with all the monitoring tools you need, it is brandable, and will rate the sway power of your influencers for their responses. It also sends the results to your inbox, RSS feed and web-based dashboard. There are four payment plans, varying from $18-$377 per month.

Trackur is a powerful tool in measuring a social web program by allowing you to listen to your customers (which provides essential feedback), monitor your online reputation (provides you with a solid picture of your presence in the social web) and simplify your social media monitoring (the easier it is for a company to monitor the social media, the better they can prepare to plan and decide on appropriate 'next steps').