I’m very interested in finding companies that can measure social media, not just blogs, not just podcasts, not just viral sites, but all social media. Nathan Gilliatt the Net Savvy Executive Blogger is watching this space too.

Baseline Requirements

1) Measure more than ‘traditional’ media, measure nearly all online vehicles that people are using.
2) Provide real time alerts about a particular product, company, person, competitor or industry.
3) Provide snapshot time reports that can benchmark changes across time.
4) These companies should also have hooks into other data sources, allow information to be pushed in and pushed out to create new times of dynamic reports.
5) Be flexible, cost effective.
6) Make it easy for companies to listen to the voice of the people.

Measuring is more than Listening
While we’re all familiar with Technorati, Talkdigger, Google blog search, opinmind, or Sphere, I’m looking for companies that are trying to tackle more, deliver value, service and perhaps consultation for companies. Also it’s not just about blogs, it’s about tracking ALL mediums that are used by the people. It’s more than just listening, it’s helping to apply benchmarking and intelligence around social media, not just one-off instances.

Ongoing list of Companies that Measure Social Media: (Leave a comment if you know of others)

• Factiva (Note: I’ll be moderating the Social Media Roundtable event on Dec 5th)
• Umbria
• Buzzlogic
• Cymfony Acquired by Taylor Nelson Sofres, in Feb 07
• Biz360
• Nielsen BuzzMetrics
• BrandIntel owned by Brandimensions (Via Podtech’s Marketing Voices, Nov 27)
• MotiveQuest
• Market Sentinel (Submitted by Andreas via comments, Nov 26)
• Onalytica (Submitted by Andreas via comments, Nov 26)
• Attentio (Submitted by Simon via comments, Nov 27)
• Technorati & Edelman (Via Nathan Gilliatt, Nov 27)
• Politizbuzz, French opf Scanblog (Via Nathan Gilliatt, Nov 27)
• CIC Data, Chinese (Via Nathan Gilliatt, Nov 27)
• Integrasco, Norway (Via Nathan Gilliatt, Nov 29)
• Wavemetrix (uk)
• Radian6 (uk)
• Kavaa (US)
• Unsure of URL
• Keibiinc
• Relevant Noise (US, Digital Grit spinoff)
• Unica (US)
• MediaMiser
• Millward Brown Precis (UK)
• I can’t tell if this is Social Media measurement however.
• Gala (Japan)
• Unsure of URL
• IBM Webfountain (everywhere, but US-based)
• Unsure of URL
• VMS (via a BuzzMetrics partnership)
• I don’t see social media being measured here
• Lotame: Matches Social Networks with ads
• RTGI, FR (submitted via comments)
• Observatoire Presidentielle(submitted via comments)
• Spotplex
• Converseon
• KDPaine & Partners
• Visible Technologies (TruCast)
• CustomScoop (via Chip)
• Pythia Analytics
• Visible Technologies
• Collective Intellect
• RepuTrace by CoreX Technologies
• BlogScope, by University of Toronto
• SentimentMetrics
• Sports Media Challenge (Fan based measurement)
• Respected PR ‘Librarian’ Constantin has added more to the PR Wiki
• Many Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firms are now offering blogosphere benchmarking. It’s easy to ‘flip the engines’ to listen and report around.

Also see: List of companies that measure online video

Calling the experts
Hopefully the Queen of measurement KD Paine has a list we can pull from. See Mike Manuel’s highlights from Forrester’s review of brand measurement companies. I reviewed some of the sites but it wasn’t clear from initial review that they all focused on Social Media. Brian, Kristy, Greg, Brian, you have any names to add?

After you’ve setup your Measuring Program
After you’ve completed your measuring (as listening is the first step) You’ll want to help optimize your own. See tips on Social Media Optimization, where Rohit kicked off the first 5, I added two more, and it just kept on going and going. This is still one of the top posts that I get my traffic from, which of course, should make complete sense.