Think Before You Pay Too Much for Social Media Monitoring

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With the meteoric rise of social media marketing, it only makes sense that tools to monitor those marketing efforts would proliferate. Paid tools run the gamut, from blessedly affordable (for solopreneurs and small businesses) to outrageously expensive (only the big guys can even hope to afford them)
Just like Web analytics tools, social media reporting systems can provide a wealth of data. But, is all that data necessary? How much of it is even useful? For most small and even medium-sized organizations, I would argue that only a small slice of what most reporting tools spit out is actionable.
Please note: I am not suggesting that you cast your social media strategies out like proverbial bread upon the waters. If you’ve decided to add social media to your marketing mix, then you need to keep track of what’s going on and how it benefits your business. However, before you decide to sign up with the monitoring tool that shows up first in your Google search, you need to determine what you want to get out of your investment.

Track Only the Social Media Metrics That Matter

You can spend as much time messing with your social media tracking system as you do with social media itself. And, when you’re juggling many different marketing initiatives, you can’t afford another time drain. So, before you spend between $50 and $1,200 bucks a month for a tracking system that may well drown you in a sea of meaningless data, determine exactly what you want to track and why. The numbers you’re monitoring should be tied to the organizational and social media goals that will help you move forward.