Know-How Exchange : Social Media

Dear Mary,

It depends on the social media channel or channels you want
to monitor. And, as Neil points out, it depends on the level of sophistication and depth you want to go into.

If it's general stuff for Google and Twitter, begin with their
online tools and services: https://www.google.com/trends https://search.twitter.com/ and https://tweetbeep.com/ for
Twitter both give great results.

If you're looking for Facebook material, begin with https://www.facebook.com/lexicon/. To use Lexicon you'll need to log in to your Facebook account but once you're in you you have the ability to search by keyword and pretty much see instantly the number of times Facebook users post certain keywords to the walls of other users.

If you're looking for specific mentions of your brand, https://socialmention.com has a lot to offer.

https://WatchThatPage.com is a handy way to keep an eye on any website you want to check for updates. When a change is made, you receive an alert telling you what's what.

There ought to be enough here to get you started. If you need more help, contact me off forum.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Follow me on www.twitter.com @GaryBloomer

Mary,

Since you asked about "paid" social media monitoring solutions, here are a bunch:

Radian6
Techrigy (offers a free trial)
Scout Labs
Nielsen BuzzMetrics
TNS Cymphony
Trakur

As to what is the "best," well like all software, it depends on your needs like Phil said. Are you just looking for something to gather up mentions or are you looking for something to help with sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) particular to your industry (i.e. some words and their sentiment are specific to each industry).

Hope this helps!
Beth Harte
Community Manager, MarketingProfs
@bethharte