Social media has dramatically changed the way organizations interact with customers and key audiences. Opportunities to engage directly and in real-time through social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs have given way to new levels of engagement with instant feedback.

As more organizations evaluate how to leverage social mediums, many are asking questions such as, “How do I measure the impact of social media for my organization and brand?” and “How can I extract insight from social mediums to help improve my business?”

While there are some tools that exist today that can help measure public sentiment and number of company or product mentions in the social media sphere, the practice of measuring the impact of social media is a work in progress and continues to evolve. A recent PR Week article explores the topic of social media measurement and reminds readers that, although social media measurement has come a long way there are still many questions left unanswered.

According to PR Week Editor Tonya Garcia, “Progress has been made on two key fronts: End users have raised their level of understanding the issue and the capabilities of measurement and monitoring technology have gotten better.” In addition, many social media measurement tools now provide information about the age, gender and location of the social media user and also enable companies to determine influencers and brand evangelists.

As a result of this progress, organizations now have access to better social media measurement tools. A few of the social media measurement tools that are helping organizations today include:

Visible Technologies – A provider of online brand management solutions for companies and individuals, Visible Technologies makes two systems for tracking conversations on the Web including TruCast and TruView.

Radian6 – Provides tools for real-time social media monitoring and analysis that lets users track keywords (names of brands, companies, products, competitors, etc.) on all forms of social media including blogs, video sharing Web sites, social networking sites, microblogging sites and more.

Cision Social Media Dashboard – A dashboard designed for PR professionals and marketers that captures data in real-time and delivers it to dashboard analysis widgets. You can set up e-mail alerts and search terms, sort social media coverage dynamically, analyze and compare volume of social media coverage, easily share reports and social media coverage with key stakeholders, and more

As these tools continue to evolve and offer more sophisticated features, organizations will have more opportunity to extract data and leverage customer feedback, measure public sentiment about their products and solutions and monitor competitors’ activities – which will no doubt help them better see the value and impact of social media.