For brands with active presence in social media monitoring social networking is one of the main challenges. Screening for other indications and interactions in social networks is a delicate and yet essential to any marketing activity in social media or simply building relationships with consumers.

Companies moving into the social media environment must, sooner or later, invest in technological tools to help them discover what customers, potential customers and competitors are saying and doing in social media.

Discover a platform for monitoring social media to carry out this work in tune with the specific needs of the company is not an easy task, every analyst knows social media, but many specialists need to share valuable tips.

Then, some of these tips. There are 25 questions that companies should do when considering buying a platform for monitoring social media .

The list was drawn up with the social networking site today specializes in digital marketing and brand Jeff Peters , the New York-based agency The Halo Group.

• Does access to historical data? If so, how far can we go back in the past?
• Excluding the results of the search / terms / queries, can access the data again in the future? Or are they completely lost?
• Is there a limit on the number of statements that can be received in a given period of time? For example, if there are a million comments / pieces of content relevant to our investigation, would you be able to see all or are limited to only a sample?
• Are there limits on the number of queries (projects, search terms, customers, etc)? Can we create within the platform?
• Can you provide a list of all content sources monitored (eg, Twitter, instead of "microblogs")?
• Do you have access to Twitter or supply hose type is limited (ie, see all results or just an example)? Do you have full access to data from other sites, or just a sample? What limitations exist for monitoring?
• Do you pull data from all location-based services, like Foursquare? If so, which ones?
• Do you pull data from the forums? Can we add specific forums? Can we add other sources, such as specific sites / trade?
• Do you pull data from review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor? And opinions retail sites. like Amazon, Best Buy, Target and others?
• Draw the comments in a blog post / article (or empty)? For example, if there is a theme or message that matches our keywords in the main post, but the comment does not contain keywords, we can remove these comments? Or you can simply remove the items matching your keywords?
• Can I remove comments in a blog post / article (or empty)? For example, if there is a theme or message that matches our keywords in the main post, but the comment does not contain keywords, we can remove these comments? Or you can simply remove the items matching your keywords?
• Can we see how many comments were an item, how many people visited a video, how many shares received a post and other similar numerical data?
• How does the load platform? Does evaluated manually or automatically? What is the accuracy? (In percentage)?
• Can block specific sources? For example, can you reject the results of a particular user on Twitter? Can block specific domains?
• Can extract data from media (sites of major newspapers, magazines, news agencies, etc.)? What is the division between the mainstream media and blogs? Should we have the results of the blogs in the media (which often are mere extensions of current)?
• Is the data / results can be exported to Excel? If so, is there a limit?
• Can we filter the data by location or narrow the results according to specific geographic locations (state, province, postal code)?
• Are all data is collected in real time with real-time updates? Or is there a delay before you see results? If there is a delay, how long?
• Besides monitoring the content, the platform can also identify potential influencers / advocates / ambassadors of the brand?
• Can participate / post content through the platform ? If so, in what social networks ?
• Can you schedule future posts / updates of the platform?
• Can assign specific tasks to team members?
• What platform can be integrated with other services? Is there an API ?
• Does the monitoring is possible in several languages​​?
• Is there an account representative or a specialized survey to help us create and exploit research?
• Do multiple team members can connect at the same time?
• What is the cost breakdown? Is it a fixed price, or based on levels and results? There is a cost to the historical data?

System monitoring social networking is serious business and requires a thorough pre-employment.