If your answer is “Yes”: congratulations, you’re a step ahead of many others, make sure you keep ahead and profit of the benefits.
If your answer is “No”: start as soon as possible understanding your landscape and what intelligence could be extracted from the Web concerning your brand.

The Social Media monitoring market is in the innovation /early adopter stage, many companies are building an ORM (Online Reputation Management) system. The market is forcasted on a total of 60 million GBP this year. Due to this “hype” and need for such a system, there is an abundance which makes the choice more difficult.

The last year I’ve been testing a couple of Social Media monitoring systems and below an evalution of the tools.

I’m testing simple tools like Google Alerts, Yahoo! Alerts, Blog Search, Technorati Search and Delicious versus the advanced tools: Trackur, BrandsEye, SM2 and Filtrbox.

The major difference between the two lies in the amount of possibilities offered by the tools to analyze and act upon the output.
Dissapointing was the (relatively) low coverage of all the systems, for me this is important so that I have the most complete overview of what is happening.
I tested the coverage by posting and commenting on blogs and other social media platforms with certain keywords, after a month or two, by far all the postings were found.

The simple tools are easy in use, you set up alerts on keywords and the results are delivered through email. 
Basically automating the process of searching and being kept up to date, the qualitative analysis of the results must be executed by the person.
If you haven’t started yet, start with one of those services, they’re easy in set up and hardly cost you time.

In the meantime you can orientate on the more advanced (paid) tools.
The basis of these tools is the same as the simple tools, track keywords throughout the social sphere.

Trackur: The system is very easy in use and not alot of options besides the basic ones (which are the most important of course) 
The results were poor because it returned too much irrelevant entries, besides this, it did not find much targeted entries which were about the keywords.
You can’t mark something as Irrelevant or Spam so that the system can update itself.
(I stopped using this system for quite a while, it can be very well the case that Trackur has updated itself massively, this is only an expression of my experience).
Website: http://www.trackur.com/
Pricing: starting from $18 per month to keep track of 3 phrases/keywords.
Overall rating: tool for companies who want to go further than the free tools and want only the core abilities for Social Media Monitoring.

Filtrbox: I’m testing Filtrbox Basic. The intuitive, Web 2.0-ish interface which works well.
What stands out directly is the low amount of entries returned, the entries that are returned are categorized and can be analyzed at a glance. Filtrbox can be placed in the same league as Trackur.
Website: http://www.filtrbox.com/
Pricing: Contact Filtrbox.
Overall rating: tool for companies who want to go further than the free tools and want only the core abilities for Social Media Monitoring.

BrandsEye: more and better results than Trackur. Brandseye offers the possibility to mark irrelevant & SPAM entries. The system has many options to analyze your entries, so you need to invest time to get acquainted with all the options.
BrandsEye offers two extra tools, Firefox extension and Recent Mentioned Gadget, I did not use them vastly, but handy tools!
The results are quite good, again, the coverage is far from complete, but the returned entries are often much more relevant.
BrandsEye offers the possibility to add RSS feeds so it will keep on finding results (as mentioned before, I knew I posted on a blog), if the system doesn’t find the entries initially and automated. This is a work around, but good that they thought of it.
Website: http://www.brandseye.com/
Pricing: starting from $1 per month to keep track of 5 phrases/keywords.
Overall rating: a basic ‘advanced’ tool which offers much more than many others. A good value-for-money proposition.

SM2: This system has the most options of all the four tested systems, charts and graphs are available in the system.
A great addition to this system are the Sentiment tools, Brand References, Content Tone, Content Emotions offer you a wide variation of approaches to analyse and understand your entries.
SM2 offers a full-fludged monitoring system for companies who are keen to deeply understand their target market, brand perception and has the ability to spend enough time (and money) in the system.
The results are good!
Website: http://sm2.techrigy.com/
Pricing: starting from $600 per month to keep track of 5 phrases/keywords.
Overall rating: superb system, take your time to learn and understand it.

Conclusions:
*It’s good to know where the conversations take place, if brands are visible, check out competitors.
*No 100% coverage, but better than the basic (free) tools, the tools give companies trend insights throughout their markets.
*Marketing and advertising agencies can include Online Reputation Management tools within their current offer (free or paid), but white label solutions are not widely available yet. (Reputation Monitor & SM2 offers white label solutions).
*Prices are relatively cheap, agencies can offer a better service to their clients when incorporating Social Media Monitoring tools to have a better understanding and response for the clients.

Our society is getting increasingly connective and responsive, tap into the vast source and apply to it all kinds of company goals and departments (like customer and market intelligence, customer service, market research, brand recognition etc)!

As I stated above, there is an abundance of Social Media Monitoring tools, please share your experience, eager to learn more about other systems?

Conclusions:
*It’s good to know where the conversations take place, if brands are visible, check out competitors.
*No 100% coverage, but better than the basic (free) tools, the tools give companies trend insights throughout their markets.
*Marketing and advertising agencies can include Online Reputation Management tools within their current offer (free or paid), but white label solutions are not widely available yet. (Reputation Monitor & SM2 offers white label solutions).
*Prices are relatively cheap, agencies can offer a better service to their clients when incorporating Social Media Monitoring tools to have a better understanding and response for the clients.

Our society is getting increasingly connective and responsive, tap into the vast source and apply to it all kinds of company goals and departments (like customer and market intelligence, customer service, market research, brand recognition etc)!