Free social media tracking

[insitegoogle]

What is the best free social media monitoring tool out there?

[AaronSchinke]

Monitoring or Management? Hootsuite is a good one for both monitoring and management. Google has several tools for listening. search.twitter.com can help you track specific mentions and phrases in real time...

[insitegoogle]

I have hootsuite pro, do I have to pay more for these features or is it included?

[insitegoogle]

I know of reports, but those are very expensive?

[AaronSchinke]

Which feature? You should have reports available in Pro as well as the ability to monitor mentions and add keyword columns to track?

[BedeFahey]

If you're looking for general monitoring across multiple platforms, I'm a fan of social mention. You'll probably need to figure out how to filter some of the junk out in your searches, though.

You get 50 report points for Hoostuite pro (at least I do for the cheapest $5.99 pro package). You can pull together a decent report with that. I believe you need to pay for extra points if you want to make more in-depth reports.

[ericpratum]

You mean monitoring as in you just want to see what's going on? Social Mention, Ice Rocket, Board Reader, Search.Twitter, Google Blogsearch, etc, etc, etc. If you just want to see what's going on now and then, I'd set up what some people call a social media listening station. It's pretty straightforward, is very flexible, and runs through whatever your favorite RSS reader is.

If you need more, take a look at the answers here: http://www.quora.com/What-social-media-tools-like-Radian6-SM2-etc-cost-less-than-500-month