There are lots of social media platforms nowadays and many wondered (including me) what would be the best tool to monitor all social media efforts we have done for our sites or our client’s sites.

I have been using different tools to monitor my social media activities but each tool gives me different results and some are not budget-friendly. Same goes with Social Media Managers, Agency Professionals, Community Managers and Constants.

A 150 social media professionals were part of OneForty survey to gather information what their main concerns were when it came to social media monitoring. Below are the answers of the respondents:

Who is buying SMM tools?

• 42.9% Social Media Managers
• 19.3% Agency Professionals
• 17.1% Consultant
• 10.7% Small Business Managers
• 10% Marketing Executives

Survey participants were asked to rate different factors according to how important that particular factor affected their selection of a SMM tool. On a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being the most important factor. The data for each “factor” is presented as an average of rating.

• 2.47 What metrics it offers
• 2.33 Interface
• 2.29 Integration of different social networks
• 2.13 Price
• 1.82 Ability to schedule updates
• 1.42 Firehose updates
• 1.39 Relationship with the vendor

How much do people pay for SMM tools?

• 4.7% $100 a month or less
• 19.7% between $100 to $500 a month
• 19% between $500 to $5,000 a month
• 2.2% spends more than $10,000 a month

What is the satisfaction level for SMM tools?

• 60.1% think that their SMM tool is “Okay”
• 34.1% are happy with their SMM tool
• 5.8% are frustrated with their SMM tools
• 2.2% spends more than $10,000 a month

What do you use Twitter for?

• 57.5% For Business and Personal Interaction
• 23.4% For Personal Interaction
• 18.7% For Business Interaction

Free SMM Tools

• Wildfire Social Media Monitor – A tool that monitors social media campaigns
• Plancast – A tool that monitors upcoming events
• Google Alerts, BlackType Alerts & Yahoo Pipes – A tool that monitors with Alerts
• Social Mention, Google Reader, IceRocket & Blog Pulse – A tool that monitors social networks & blogs
• HootSuite, Seesmic, TweetDeck, Twitlert – A tool that monitors Twitter & Facebook
• WatchThatPage – A tool that monitors webpage changes
• Social Seek, BuzzFeed, MonitorThis, Guzzle – Tools that monitor Social Search

Survey results and data from OneForty.

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Tags: Free SMM Tools, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Monitoring Tools, Social Media Tools