Which Social Media Tool?

Social media has done a lot of good things for brands.  It’s pro­vided an avenue for inter­ac­tion, estab­lished a place for com­mu­nity and assisted in build­ing cred­i­bil­ity… but geez has it cre­ated a lot of work!

Remem­ber when brands were the des­ti­na­tion?  Con­sumers went to brand prop­er­ties to com­mu­ni­cate and inter­act.  Brand man­agers rem­i­nisce fondly of those days as now they are the ones doing the trekking.  And while it hardly seems fair that brands are required to scour the Inter­net for what’s being said about them, this is the new reality.

The good news is there are plenty of tools avail­able to help brand man­agers mon­i­tor what’s being said about their brand.  So with the myr­iad of solu­tions out there which one will pro­vide you with the most util­ity?  Here are a few con­sid­er­a­tions that will point you in the right direction.

1. Every social media aggre­ga­tor sub­scribes to a slightly dif­fer­ent method­ol­ogy.  They use unique algo­rithms in deter­min­ing which infor­ma­tion is impor­tant.  You should start the process here by find­ing the tool the makes the most sense for your brand.
2. Each social media ana­lytic plat­form will pull infor­ma­tion for dif­fer­ent data sets.  They cast their nets and har­vest infor­ma­tion in vary­ing pools.  Make sure the plat­form you choose is mon­i­tor­ing the right online spaces for your brand.
3. As being able to process the data effi­ciently and effec­tively is key for suc­cess, make sure the appli­ca­tion you select pro­vides reports and graph­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tions that can be cus­tomized and eas­ily con­sumed.  The plat­form should help you sift through the data to hone in on the infor­ma­tion that matters.

Uti­liz­ing these con­sid­er­a­tions to eval­u­ate which tool is aligned with your sit­u­a­tion and intended appli­ca­tion will ensure a more suc­cess­ful social media mon­i­tor­ing program.

Of course you could always engage the ser­vices of professionals.