An approach for evaluation of social media monitoring tools

Social networks are important means for communication, engaging millions of users around the globe. For enterprises in particular, being present and aware of what is discussed on these communication channels about their products and services has become a must. Social media monitoring tools enable enterprises to have access to real customers' opinions, complaints and questions at real time in a highly scalable way. As the number of social monitoring tools has rapidly increased in the last years, enterprises are faced with the difficult tasks of choosing the right tool for their needs. This paper proposes a structured evaluation framework comprising a set of evaluation criteria that can be used to analyze social monitoring tools from three perspectives: the concepts they implement, the technologies used and the user interface they provide. To exemplify the usefulness of our evaluation framework we analyze a set of social monitoring tools after briefly describing them.