A Business.com solution guide to selecting the best social media monitoring tool for your business.

Introduction

From real-time customer service to reputation management and competitive intelligence, B2B marketers are quickly discovering the powerful and versatile effects of social media. With interactive marketing forecasts projecting social media spend to outpace all other types of online marketing at a compound annual growth rate of 34% from 2009 to 2014,  and research indicating 86% of B2B firms use social media, it's clear social media has become a key component of any online marketing program.

A recent co-sponsored study by Business.com and BtoB Online of more than 450 B2B marketers showed 97% of online marketers currently use at least one social media resource; however, when it comes to measuring social media efforts, only 47% of marketers are currently using a social media monitoring tool.

Clearly, the measurement of social media lags behind its adoption. But, as social media focus and spend continues to trend upward, proper measurement will become essential for justifying and growing future social media budgets.

Business.com wants to help B2B marketers make more informed decisions when it comes to choosing the proper social media monitoring solution to help measure and optimize their social media strategy. We've compiled a list of some of the most popular social media monitoring tools on the market and included product summaries, user feedback and a clear- cut comparison chart to guide you through the decision-making process.

Chief Marketer's 2010 survey on the spread of social marketing finds more interest than ever

In last year's Chief Marketer social marketing survey, we said that if you weren't integrating social media into your marketing plans, you were not behind the curve — yet.

According to this year's findings, that window is rapidly closing. About 64% of the more than 1,300 respondents to our 2010 Social Marketing Survey said they now integrate social into their media mix in some fashion, whether through a Facebook page, Twitter account, a corporate blog, a social community on their site or via a third party, or simply by interfacing with influential bloggers. Another 21.5% said they aren't up and running in social media yet but expect to be so by the end of next year.

That means by 2012, more than 85% of marketers anticipate having a significant marketing presence of some kind in social media whether corporate blogs, social networks, microposting platforms like Twitter, or some format that has not yet surfaced in the social media world. That compares to 80% who said last year that they had or would have a social marketing plan in place in 2010.