Last week, we discussed the importance of Social Media Analytics. While it is always difficult to measure your marketing and public relation efforts, it is necessary to gather as much information as possible so you can make informed decisions for upcoming messages being released to your fan base. In last week’s article, we recommended several useful tools, including Crowdbooster, Sprout Social, Facebook Insights, and Google Analytics. Good as these tools are, you need more to get the entire picture. So we decided to pick up where we left off last week and suggest four more tools to help you gain the competitive edge you need. Best of all, they’re free!

Wildfire

Google recently acquired the Wildfire, a marketing company that specializes in social media.   Wildfire has created a completely free tool that allows you to compare your likes, check-ins, and followers to those of your competitors.

Klout

Probably one of the most useful tools in tracking how specific media efforts impact your company’s visibility is a tool called Klout. It measures online engagement over the past 90 days with a  “Klout Score,” so you can find out exactly which messages created the most impact. It allows you to set up links to as many of your social media accounts as you like, and provides the number of followers influenced by your message.

My Top Tweet

While not deeply analytical, My Top Tweet does provide a top  10 list of retweets of your published tweets. It’s easy to use, and can give you some insight into what your followers want to hear and which social marketing campaigns you should repeat.

Hootsuite

This free application provides a pretty amazing way to manage all of your social media accounts in one place. In the Hootsuite dashboard, you can set up separate tabs for each type of social media you use, and also generate several types of analytics reports. ( Hootsuite's advanced analytics are amazing, but they will cost you a small fee.)

Don’t be afraid to try different marketing messages. Something that you may think is cheesy or boring may be what your followers find the most interesting. Play around, but be sure you monitor your efforts to make sure you are gaining ground.

 —Chris Marentis is founder and CEO of Surefire Social, a company specializing in local internet marketing.