I’m always being asked about which tools are the best for monitoring and measuring social media. That’s a difficult question for me to answer without first understanding your business objectives, of course… and all my fellow blog followers know, the first question you have to ask before starting any marketing project is:

What is your objective?

Once you know that, we can drill into both free and paid products.

Last November (which somehow was already about four months ago), I co-presented on measuring and monitoring social media with John Mohr of System’s Alliance at their annual user conference in Baltimore, Maryland. John and I put together a short list of products we were familiar with and I’d like to share that here.

I always suggest starting with Google Analytics. It’s free and easy to use. If you’re not using it, I suggest not bothering with anything else until it’s up and running. Analysis is the basis of nearly everything you will do with measuring social media, so you need a good foundation, and GA is just that. If you’ve sat in on any of my sessions lately, then you already get it.