Here’s a framework for marketers confused about the differences between the plethora social media ‘solutions’ out there, just published on my work blog.
| Solution | What they do | Who needs it | Who provides it |
| Monitoring | Watch and track mentions of an organization, brands, products and people – and those of competitors | Any company that cares about what is being said about them on social networks | Vendors include Radian6, Sprout Social, Trackur and Visible Technologies |
| Measurement | Measure social media engagement data | Organizations that want to capture, measure and interpret social media activity | Solutions include Adobe SocialAnalytics, IBM Coremetrics Social Analytics and Webtrends Social |
| Management | Help companies manage and maintain their social media accounts | Companies with multiple brand/market accountsThose in highly regulated industries | Vendors include Buddy Media, CoTweet and HootSuite |
| Metrics | Provide standards and KPIs for social media measurement | Any organization that measures or needs to measure its social media performance | Formal metrics include the Online Promoter Score, PRINT™ Index and the Social Business Index |
I made some observations about the relevance of each of these on the original post over here.