9 handy social media tools to help monitor the financial markets

With the stock markets becoming of greater interest not only to investors but the general populous, monitoring existing and new trends in this area has become a hot topic. Therefore it’s vital that the information obtained is up to date and relevant towards any decisions that have to be made.

With there being over 200 different tools and programs to help monitor social media and the web, we decided to compile a list of the more useful tools and programs, some free others for a price, to help monitor any changes and keep you up to date with whatever developments occur over the coming weeks.

Stocktweets

Effectively a live stream of news relating to the stock market, the site also allows traders and investors to share their views and ideas as well as the option to add charts and links to help illustrate your point.

Google Alerts

Overlooked because Google have so many other features, you can get Alerts to send you updates on a chosen topic straight to your email account. It can filter through news stories, web pages, blogs and videos to bring you all examples or the most relevant. It’s limited as it only brings results from Google’s own search engine but if you’re in need of a free tool to keep up to date, you could do a lot worse.

Meltwater Buzz

One of the paid tools on this list, Meltwater Buzz allows you to uncover conversations across 200 million sources for info to help your business.

It also gives you insight into emerging themes, subjects and influences allowing you to react to whatever changes occur. Collaboration tools are also available to help you manage and create new strategies for campaigns.

Appinions

The site focuses on opinions from social media, articles focusing on those who create content and attract the most attention. It filters through and aggregates these sources into data to be used.

Radian6

The second paid tool on this list, Radian6 allows you to view conversations concerning your products and brand in real time but also combines it with other factors such as demographics, geolocation, and influence to give you a more comprehensive picture.

Tweetdeck

Limited to twitter but using its search feature will allow you to create a column dedicated to giving you live updates about whatever topic you choose.

Zecco

Integrated into Facebook, Zecco allows you to buy shares that are available on the Dow Jones in just a couple of clicks. Not only can you monitor and see the performance in other stocks but you can see what your friends are investing in as well if they are also using the app.

Alterian SM2

The third paid tool on this list, Alterian SM2 tracks mentions on blogs, forums and social networks among many others to give you an idea of the type of conversations occurring online. The program monitors demographic, location and the emotion and tone of conversations of a chosen topic and aggregates results into positive and negative categories allowing quick results and data.

Sentiment Metrics

This tool allows users to listen to consumer conversations across more than 20 million blogs, five million forum posts and 30,000 online news sources, social networks and microblogs. The site allows you to have an unlimited free trial of their services with an option to upgrade to a paid version.

As we weren’t able to fit in at least 191 other social media tools, what else would be worth including in this list?