Top 10 FREE Social Media Monitoring tools

Social Media Marketing takes time and your success as a marketer depends on your strategy and perseverance. Here, in this article we talk about that part of the strategy which is the most crucial one and many a times the most ignored one- Social Media Monitoring.

Monitoring your social media initiatives will not only help you gauge the success of your campaigns and initiatives but will also help in understanding what people are saying about you. Social Media Monitoring may leave you exhausted but you will certainly relish the deep and real insights which it leaves you with. There are a lot of tools available out there, some paid and some free but here I have compiled a list of free social media monitoring tools which you can try out to kick start your monitoring activity.

We present a list of the Top 10 FREE Social Media Monitoring tools

Kurrently:It is used by many agencies. Enter your keyword and it tracks the real time mentions of it on Facebook and tweets in Twitter

HowSociable?:Enter your brand name and you get to see your brand’s most influential mentions across 25 different social platforms. Their monthly tracker comes free which keeps you updated on your visibility score. Apart from this, you can also upgrade your account to compare with your competitors, record your scores and export analytics in CSV.

Monitter: One of the most popular tools, it lets you do twitter monitoring in real time. One can also select a location for more geo-specific monitoring.

Socialmention: It claims to be ‘Google alerts’ for social media. A different offering in this is that you can also track sentiments -positive, negative and neutral. You can also set up social mention email alerts and get email alerts for the desired keyword.

Buzzref:Developed indigenously, Buzzref comprehensively breaks up the analytics of your Facebook page and helps you with detailed charts and graphs. Best part is that you can get reports for past 7days or even past 6 months. Why would you use this when you have Facebook insights for your page? Simple, to monitor your competitor’s page.

Icerocket:This tool will surely impress you. You can use it as a real time search engine to track Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and also Images. Best things about Ice Rocket are its small little additions which differentiate it from other tools, additions like the details of twitterer, option to find common followers, search links related to keyword and few others. One word to describe this tool – Bounteous.

Twazzup:Another popular Twitter monitoring tool. Twazzup is a single window to check out latest tweets about the keyword you enter, live pics, news, and influencers. It also displays a list of related keywords and a simple mouse-over them is enough to check latest tweets on them.

GoogleAlerts: Need I say anything about this? One of the most widely used tool. Get notified when a keyword selected by you is mentioned somewhere in the universe.

Addict-o-matic:Search for any term and it helps you with list of best sites for latest news, pics, etc. Best part- you can create a customized page for the keyword of your choice and get latest updates. You can choose from a platter of 24 different social platforms to aggregate results for your keyword and organize them with the help of a friendly drag-drop option in a manner you want and bookmark the same via Facebook, Stumble Upon, Delicious, or Twitter.

WhoRetweetedMe: Who Retweeted Me helps you analyze the performance of your link and gauge its estimated reach. You can also see who are the top influencers amongst the people who retweeted your link. Best thing about this is that it provides you with a retweet timeline chart through which you can see the time (ET) during which it got the most retweets and also top 20 Retweeters along with an option to thanks them by tweeting back at them.

So, make sure you pick up a right mix which suits your needs. Do share with us your thoughts after using any one of these. If you come across some other awesome tool then please feel free to share it with us.

Somesh Khandalkar

http://about.me/someshkhandalkar

http://twitter.com/#!/isomesh

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For Pharma, FDA Is Elephant in Facebook Comment Room

On Monday, Facebook began requiring pharmaceutical brand pages to enable comments, as expected. Yet, although pharma marketers are fearful of regulatory reaction to a potential flood of comments, some don’t see Facebook as the big villain in the story. It’s the Food and Drug Administration that’s raised the most ire.

“Yesterday’s announcement about Facebook’s new policy only served to underscore the importance of the FDA’s long-time forthcoming guidance,” wrote Kate Conners of The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association on the trade group’s blog yesterday.

“What’s more, the FDA has not clarified whether companies should be held responsible for the comments on third parties posted on company-controlled Web sites; the government promised a relevant guidance on these issues in 2009.”

Pharma companies have been begging the FDA to give guidance on use of social media communications by pharmaceutical brands since before a hearing on the issue was held in November 2009. Though the FDA’s Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications – the body which reviews ads for prescription drugs – has said it plans to release guidelines on at least one related topic this year, the first quarter 2011 deadline it last gave has come and gone.

“One thing we’re expecting [the Facebook change] to do is to put a little bit more pressure on the FDA to come up with something,” said Monique Levy, VP of research at health and pharma industry research firm Manhattan Research. “It’s giving the whole issue renewed attention.”

Starting Monday August 15, Facebook now requires pharma brands to include comments on their pages. Since Facebook announced the upcoming switch in May, pharma marketers have been scrambling to come up with solutions that satisfy their colleagues in legal. Most brands have tiptoed into social media environments like Facebook and Twitter, recognizing the potential marketing value, but remain extremely cautious.

The Facebook changeover has disrupted the no-comment cocoons pharma brands have snuggled in until now, and firms are taking a variety of safe approaches to navigating the newly conversational landscape of their brand pages.

“We want to make sure that we’re monitoring on a regular basis throughout the day to ensure that anything that’s up there we’re able to respond to appropriately,” said Stacy Burch, director of corporate reputation and digital communications at Sanofi in the U.S. in an August 15 interview with Washington, D.C. lawyer Mark Senak featured in a podcast on his EyeOnFDA blog. The company has kept its Sanofi-aventis U.S. Diabetes page intact, which now includes comments. “The absence of any official FDA regulations” is the main issue for pharmaceutical companies, said Burch.

In his interview, Senak referred to August 15 as “D-Day” and “a notorious day for those of us in digital communications.”

“Now that you can respond to our posts, please know that we may sometimes need to remove a comment. Click on the ‘Not Seeing Your Comment?’ link on the left to learn why. Thank you for visiting us!” wrote Pfizer on its corporate Facebook page on Monday. The company also added a new “not seeing your comment?” tab on the left-side page navigation.

Pharma marketers are required to report adverse effects of their drugs, so if someone posts a comment about an adverse effect on a Facebook page, the company is responsible to report that to the FDA. Also, when they become aware of online conversations including incorrect or off-label information about their drugs and products, they need to notify the agency.

In a lengthy explanation on Facebook, Pfizer detailed “why we might need to remove your comment from our wall.” The company listed several reasons including, “Your comment references a Side Effect,” and “Your comment contains Medical Advice.” Another reason for takedown: “If your post references a pharmaceutical brand from any company – positive or negative – we will need to remove it because, among other reasons, we can’t guarantee that it will represent Fair Balance.”

Other pages remain alive with comments, including Sounds of Pertussis, an education project from Sanofi Pasteur Inc. and March of Dimes; The Diabetes Dish, a Merck page; and Pfizer Hemophilia’s Hemophilia Community.

In some cases, comments could become a blessing in disguise, fostering the relationships brands supposedly developed Facebook pages for in the first place. “You are doing a fantastic thing by spreading awareness,” wrote a commenter on the Sounds of Pertussis page. “My almost 2 month old son is now a pertussis survivor…. I have been doing everything I can to tell everyone I know our story. I’ve been linking people to your site, this page the digital quilt.”

Meanwhile, the Facebook decision appears to have been a death sentence for some pages. Allergan’s Juvederm, Latisse, and Join the Millions – a Botox Cosmetic page – all feature this line alone on their walls: “There are no more posts to show.”

Some pages have been wiped from existence. For instance, as reported by Jonathan Richman on his Dose of Digital site, where he’s been tracking the impact of the Facebook changeover, ADHD Allies, a page from McNeil Pediatrics, has been removed.

Update: After this story was published, the wall of Merck’s “The Diabetes Dish” page on Facebook made no posts available.

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Meet up with top voices in search, social, display, and email marketing during ClickZ’s Connected Marketing Week, Aug. 15-19, in San Francisco.

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