Considering to buy a social media monitoring solution? With the plethora of tools and technologies out there, confusion abounds. Which solution best meets your needs? This section will provide a perspective, and frame the considerations in terms of a number of questions which you should ask any vendor. This site has made this easy, however - answers to most of these questions you will be able to find in the Guide to Social Media Monitoring Tools section....

Acknowledgement for the content of this section should go to Jennifer Zeszut of Scout Labs, who initially blogged about this on the Scout Labs blog....

Media categories covered	This question is among the first you'd like to get an answer to. Some tools cover the whole gamut of social media - others are more specific. The more traditional media monitoring tools have added social media to their historical categories of print and broadcast media.
Custom sources	Even if a vendor covers a lot of media categories, it is important to know whether you can easily add your own custom sources. If they can, also ask them how long it takes to see them in the results
Geographies covered	Depending on your specific need, verify the various geographical areas covered by the vendor. Coverage of the US might simply not be enough...
Languages covered	Similar to the previous question - you need to know the specific languages covered by the tool.
Ability to sort results	You want to know whether results can easily be sorted by date, media type, but also by the relevancy you adhere to a particular post or article.
Spam	An important issue given the large volume of data generated on the web. Inquire whether the tool filters by spam, and how it goes about doing so. Does the tool show what has been filtered out as spam? If you wish, can you enter an entry that has been classified as spam back into the list of main results? Can you as a user tag entries as spam? If so, will these be removed instantly from the search results?
Historical data	Once you start an account, it might be important to know whether you can go back in time. It might be feasible to go back to a specific historical date, or alternatively the vendor provides the option to go back a specific amount of time prior to the start date of the account. Something you want to know in advance... What's also important to know is what's available in relation to historical data - the complete data set or just a subset of the data, and whether or not sentiment analysis or any other analysis is available for historical data sets. Finally, you should inquire how long these analyses might take (if available) and what the cost implications are.
Trend analysis	Find out whether trend analysis can be applied to historical data, or in general to subsets of the data. Also inquire how many fields of meta data the analysis can be applied to - you don't want to be caught with limitations in this regard.
Reporting services	Understand the reporting services provided, and of what type: real time and/or historical. Find out in which formats they can be exported (.csv/.xls/other). You should also know whehter the API is available for export options.
Dashboard	A dashboard is a very handy element which will help show results to others in your organization - find out whether it is offered, and whether it is customizable. You also need to know how long it takes for a tool dashboard to be populated with data after you have initiated a specific search.
Analysis services	Not all tools provide analysis services - make sure you inquire about this feature if it is relevant to you. There are a multitude of variables, including volume, share of voice, geomapping, analysis by author, theme, topic and more - find out about the options available.
Sentiment analysis	One of the relevant analysis parameters, it is also among the most difficult and controversial to execute. Find out whether it is offered as part of the tool, and whether it is automated, done by humans, or through a combination of both. Is sentiment trending data available? Is a tone rating scale provided, and if so, is it a three point scale (positive/neutral/negative) or a five point scale (highly positive/positive/neutral/negative/highly negative) or possibly done in another way? Finally, you might want to know whether sentiment analysis is available for current articles only or also for archival data.
Business intelligence solutions	If you organization employs BI solutions (or might consider doing so in the future), it is relevant to know whether an interface is provided with existing BI solutions, and if so, which ones.
Real time alerts	Find out whether real time alerts are provided and how they are delivered.
Support for multiple departments	In your organization multiple departments might find access to a social media monitoring tool useful. Find out whether the tool supports that, and what the financial repercussions are.
Workflow	Inquire about the tool's workflow abilities.
Customer support	It would be good to know about the types of support made available to customers - helpdesk, onsite, documentation. Find out about the amount of time it takes to become well-versed with the system.
Number of clients	Inquire about the number of clients the company has, and the average number of users on each account.
Pricing	Cost is among the more complex questions to answer, as there are so many ways to price these services. Some pricing models charge by the number of queries you do, others by the number of results the queries generate. Cost is potentially also impacted by number of users. Find out about the specific pricing model employed by the vendor. And look forward to more analyses on this site about vendor pricing policies...