New emails show up in my in-box every single day from companies stating to offer the ultimate social media measurement tool. If you know anything about me, you know that I’ve used almost every tool that’s worth mentioning. You also know that I can list every heart-stopping crock of crap issue within each and every one of them. Here are some of the most prevalent lies that are being pushed.

1. We track Facebook Mentions.

It’s a lie because: Unless they are Facebook, the company, they are unable to access any type of private data. Anyone who’s anyone is set to private on Facebook. If they’re not, then you probably don’t care about what they have to say because the sample size is so small it won’t qualify any assumptions.
Work around: you can track stuff happening within your page/campaign via Facebook provided ‘insights’.

2. We track all the tweets, all the time, forever.

It’s a lie because: The announcement and implementation of the auto RT button (see image below) ruined tracking for everyone. Why? Because it doesn’t register within an API search call as a hit. It’s technically a redirect. Which is why if you do a manual search for something you’re positive your friends are RTing, you will only see manual RTs (this is when the person actually types in the tweet text entry box RT and copy/pastes your original tweet). Make sense?
Work around: Hire an intern to sit in front of Twitter 24/7. Or wait till Twitter launches their own tracking service, which is coming VERY soon.

3. We can tell you how your customers feel.

It’s a lie because: Computers aren’t people. For example: Fuck Yeah! Would be considered negative because of the ‘f’ word, when realistically, the user was just super stoked on whatever it was they were talking about.
Work around: Some tools claim to be trainable. Some tools let you make your own assumptions and enter your own keywords. Another work around would be to actually use social media to search for opinions on your own.