With costs for social media monitoring and measurement tools ranging from £1,000 p/month to £½ million a year… you could be forgiven for thinking isn’t there an alternative way?

Well after attending a recent presentation by Marshall Sponder at Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp titled ‘How to Build Your Own Social Media Monitoring Service‘ there could actually be!

Well unfortunately in this case, it’s true that you only get what you pay for as these tools can’t really compare to the paid alternatives. However, the free ones mentioned can provide a useful starting point for any social media activity and act as a benchmark for further work, so with a little time and effort you could still benefit.

Limitations can include a lack of historical data, it’s usually impossible to go back further than a couple of weeks, multilingual support or the ability to really drill deep in to a specific issue if required.

But if you do decide to try them, please let me know how you get on.