The market for social media marketing tools includes the dominant leaders, such as Google Insights and HootSuite, as well as niche services that have small but loyal users, such as Pipes, Trackur and Viral Heat.  It’s a very crowded field, and new tools are being introduced regularly.

There is no shortage of tools available for social media management, so the challenge for marketers is to figure out what they should actually be measuring and what is considered success. For example, do you want clicks on your links, retweets or transactions?

And what channel is the most efficient and cost-effective—mobile, Facebook, etc.

Ultimately, the tools are only as good as your ability to process the data in a meaningful way.

That being said, here’s a list of popular tools being used to manage and monitor social media marketing campaigns:

• Google Insights for Search. A free service from Google similar to Google Trends combined with Google Analytics. It provides insights into the search terms people have been entering into the Google search engine.  It offers a lot of options. You can view search trends individually or by comparison. You can see worldwide, countrywide, and regional breakdowns of searches. You can drill down to see related searches.  The difference between Google Insights for Search and Google Analytics is that Google Insights shows overall search trends while Google Analytics shows specific trends for a single website. Anyone can use Google Insights, while Google Analytics must have a tracking component placed by the website owner.

• HootSuite: Social media dashboard for managing social content and engagement on multiple networks with team workflow and statistics.  One of the few tools that currently allows users to integrate and update across 10 social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare etc.  Like SocialOomph, HootSuite will automate tweets. But it’s most useful feature is how it juggles multiple social media accounts. Not only can you create a dashboard that lets you monitor your Twitter accounts, but you can add your Facebook (this includes Facebook pages), LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress blog, MySpace and Foursquare accounts. This is so integrated that you can write one update that goes to any and all of those social media timelines/pages.  HootSuite offers three packages — Basic, Pro and Enterprise — that are targeted toward small or medium-sized businesses and others who need control and analytics for their online activity.

• Social Oomph. This website offers many free and premium services to help you manage your Twitter account—you can schedule tweets, send automatic messages to those who follow you and follow all your followers automatically.

• Sprout Social. Affordable social media dashboard, monitoring, team workflow, influencer and contact management, performance metrics and daily or weekly email summaries. Supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp and Foursquare. A social relationship manager designed to help small businesses and brands manage multiple social networks from one place. Prices start at $9.99 per month under Sprout Social Professional, which lets you manage up to five identities.  Sprout Social Professional can monitor Twitter, Facebook (fan and personal pages) and LinkedIn. This means you can search, monitor and cross-post to networks, schedule messages to be posted, as well as track links and referrals.  For $49.99 per month, Sprout Social Business lets you manage 10 identities or locations. You also get additional metrics, more advanced tracking data, Foursquare and Yelp support, geo-targeting ,and the ability to create daily specials or offers.  This cross-platform social media management tools enable you to find new customers and to grow your business.

• Involver.  Used by Facebook’s internal marketing team, Involver offers four packages: Basic (free), Professional ($99/month), Business ($549/month) and Enterprise ($2,749/month).  The basic package consists of a number of social media tools, such as RSS Feed, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc., from which you can choose two that will be added to your Facebook page. Each succeeding plan offers more tools like analytics, an account manager to set up your accounts (comes with Business and Enterprise), multi-media publishing (images, audio, video and text across multiple networks) as well as tech support. provides marketers with a “social markup language” (SML), an engagement platform and customizable social applications from which to create and monitor content.

• CoTweet. Users can choose between CoTweet’s free Standard plan or its new paid option, Enterprise. The Standard plan is aimed at individuals and organizations that manage a small number of Twitter accounts and need only basic features to manage their conversations. CoTweet Standard offers Tweet scheduling, email notifications, multiple account publishing, click tracking, message assignments, and some analytics reporting. It does not include Facebook account access or have a native iPhone app.  Last year, CoTweet added a paid option to its standard plan, which provides additional analytics and tweet history and starts at $7,000 per year. The Enterprise plan includes more detailed analytics resources, a lifetime archive of customer interactions, faster Twitter updates, and help with account management from CoTweet’s team.

• TweetDeck. A personal browser for staying in touch and connecting you with contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networks. TweetDeck is a free tool that has been ramping up its features. In addition to managing Facebook and Twitter accounts, users can also update their Foursquare, LinkedIn, Googlebuzz and MySpace accounts, share photos on Flickr, watch YouTube videos and more.

• Vitrue. Offers three main components — Vitrue Tabs, Vitrue Publisher, and Vitrue Apps — to help businesses personalize their social media networks. With Vitrue Tabs, users get a content management system for creating a Facebook fan page and custom homepage. Tabs let users manage as few as one Facebook page and one Twitter stream to multiple streams. Vitrue Apps helps you create custom videos, photo slideshows, polls, surveys, coupons and other marketing tools for Facebook.  Vitrue Publisher allows you to post scheduled messages and apps to Facebook and Twitter as well as monitor responses to your posts.  Vitrue offers a month-to-month license in three price plans, beginning with a $300 entry-level package.  Works with clients and agencies through a Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform offering Facebook tabs & applications, a publishing feature for Facebook and Twitter and mobile solutions.

• Full Contact. Integrates all your contacts to one location from Salesforce, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, and other sources onto one dashboard, which you can divide among people and companies. It pulls news and updates from the various networks onto one newsfeed automatically. Gist also recently added Tungle to its list of integrated profiles.

• Nutshell Mail. Brings social networks to your email inbox for free, enabling you to keep track of all your Facebook, Twitter, and other email accounts by sending scheduled, consolidated email alerts. Nutshell Mail sends one email updating you on multiple social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, without clogging up your inbox. It’s ideal for those who have several accounts but aren’t heavy social network users.

Part II: More Social Media Management Tools

Contact Digital Eye Media for information on how to Manage your Social Media Marketing campaigns: P: (949) 900-3017; sales@digitaleyemedia.com.