We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of requests for social influence marketing proposals, which is a great thing. I, personally, think that social media as a marketing tool affords companies an opportunity to position themselves as brands of choice among their prospects and customers. It can compliment (notice I didn’t say replace) many of the other marketing tactics and channels that organizations are employing quite nicely. Before diving into online conversations, companies need to prepare themselves to listen and participate transparently, and to do that effectively they need a social media monitoring tool.
With a social media monitoring tool, you’ll be able to hear what’s being said about your company, brand, employees, and competition. You’ll be better armed to participate in the conversation and you’ll be able to react to negative publicity before it snowballs out of control and damages your brand. One additional (and very important) feature of a social media monitoring tool is the ability to identify trends and hot topics, allowing you to create content (blog posting, Fan Page update, Tweet) that matches consumer interest.
We’ve explored a number of these monitoring tools and have listed them below (in no particular order) with some images that link to each company’s respective site. These tools all have different features, benefits, and price tags making them a good choice for some companies and not for others. Got a question on how to select a monitoring tool? Give us a shout! Use one of these tools? We’d love hearing your thoughts on what you like or don’t like about it.
