There’s a good overview today of the available social media monitoring tools on ReadWriteWeb:

If it’s all about “joining the conversation,” one of the biggest challenges for organizations jumping into social media is finding and prioritizing all the conversations available.

The question “Which social media monitoring tool is best?” is interesting.  More interesting questions include “Who should be using these tools?” and “What are the best practices for using these tools?”

Our work with start-up technology companies over the years has suggested to us that these kinds of companies simply won’t invest the time and discipline to put social media monitoring tools to their best use: important conversations will be missed, and opportunities for constructive participation will be lost.  Moreover, these companies likely will not have a thoroughly considered social media engagement model.

Thus, we think, these tools are for PR agencies to use on behalf of their clients, as an integrated part of an overall outbound communications strategy.  And, if that’s the case, these tools need to provide far richer operations, administration, and management capabilities: the tools need to reflect the realities of professional PR workflow, including timekeeping, responsibility tracking, and reporting.

Via The Future of Social Media Monitoring, Marshall Kirkpatrick