Sometimes, it is those of us in the tech industry who are our own worse examples of actually using the technologies that we have created. Take the example of tools that variously go under the headings of sentiment analysis, social CRM, engagement measurement, social media management, enterprise listening platforms or social media marketing. These things help you figure out when you should Tweet or post, who is most influential among your social networks, and what conversations you should pay attention to. They offer pretty dashboards and real-time data feeds so you can control the social conversations around your brand.

I am starting a project for Network World reviewing these tools. So far, I have found nearly 100 of them, but I can only review 8. But that isn’t the problem. My issue is that I would expect that these vendors would be sterling examples of how to engage their own audiences. Not true, no way, sorry to say.

Example #1. By now, it should be obvious that a software vendor should make it easier for their potential customers if they actually want to purchase their product. So how about putting a phone number on the home page, just in case someone wants to call? Less than half of the vendors do this, or make it so hard to find their contact information. Almost all of them use Web forms that you have to fill out, which is less than satisfying because you have no recourse if you don’t get any follow up. One vendor takes you to a form on their Facebook page, which is interesting but not very helpful.

Example #2. The same should be true for displaying a press contact. Again, less than half of the vendors have this information, or make it so hard to find. Others, such as Google, ignored my emails entirely. Written on one vendor’s press page, I had to laugh: “Hi! We love you, you dashing citizen of the fourth estate. Even though we don’t know you personally yet, I can tell we’re going to get on famously. Can I get you a drink?” Now we are talking! While you don’t have to buy me a beer, it would be nice if the press contact was in plain sight.

Example #3. How easy is it to find these vendors on Twitter? You would think that placing a little bird icon at the top of their home page linking you to their Twitter accounts would be easy. And indeed, most of them (but not all) do include this information somewhere on their sites. One vendor had a broken link that didn’t take them to their Twitter account but someplace else entirely.

But let’s go beyond actually having a link to the ID, and see how engaged they are with their accounts. It is a spotty record, to be sure.

Some vendors have thousands of Tweets and followers, which is what you would expect from people in this space. Hootsuite is the Justin Bieber of social media tracking tools with more than four million followers, and dozens of daily tweets. (He is at 31 million, BTW.) The major vendors in this space, including Google, Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe, also have big followings and lots of tweets.

But when you get beyond the big guns and look around, it is disappointing. Very few of these vendors actually use their own products to track engagement and mentions. I started posting tweets with the vendor Twitter IDs (once I found them), asking them to get in touch with me. A very small number of vendors responded at all. An even smaller number started following me or sent me messages saying they wanted to help my project. How do these vendors expect anyone to use their products if they don’t track their own brands? Hmm.

Many of these are software efforts from marketing companies, or ad agencies, or others who should know better. Or so I thought.

Example #4: Pricing. I have written before about those vendors that don’t want to put pricing information online, but the social media tools that I am looking at really try to obfuscate their pricing. Perhaps because every deal is a custom negotiation, perhaps because they just don’t want you, the customer, to know. In this particular and chaotic market, prices vary all over the place. Some tools are designed for single users while others are geared for large teams. Some have freemium models, others have one-time fees like traditional packaged software.

There was one site that had an explicit “Pricing” tab at the top of their home page: I thought, at last! When I clicked on it, I came to a page that had all sorts of details about the various plans they offered, but no dollar signs anywhere to be found (See above).

Gremln is an exception: they actually put their prices right at the bottom of their home page. Kudos to them. (No phone number, though.)

As I said, I am just starting out on this project for Network World. If you have any experience with these products, send me a tweet or an email. And if you want to see my collection of vendors, I have put together a list here.

A well-constructed usability survey can reveal what your users actually want. Here are tips from an experienced designer on putting together a solid survey, and online tools to help.

A site developer needs to know when to listen to their users, and one of the best ways is to survey their likes and dislikes. But putting together solid surveys isn’t always intuitive. Luckily, there are user experience experts such as Caroline Jarrett and various online tools to help.

Surveys now are cheap and easy to do. I receive requests to answer various surveys almost one per week, and I am sure you do as well. But before you start down the survey path, figure out first how you are going to get respondents, and how to make them trust you. Make sure your request looks legit, and that you aren’t just collecting email addresses for spamming them later with other requests. Include some form of reward up front so the respondent is motivated to help you.

Jarrett’s presentation (and upcoming book) are full of great ideas on improving your surveys. Your survey should ask about a recent and vivid experience, because people tend to forget things over time. Ask one question at a time, rather than putting them together into a compound and confusing question. Don’t worry too much about the number of individual points on your rating scale: whether to choose five or seven or an even number, your respondents don’t much care. Do put effort into the “other” category to make it easier to answer or to collect responses that you hadn’t thought of. Keep the preamble information short and sweet, so your respondents don’t have to page through a lot of preliminary screens before they start answering your questions. And don’t collect your demographic data up front, but at the end when a respondent is more likely to fill out this sort of information.

Spend some time perfecting your questions, and testing them quickly to see if you are going in the right direction. This is called pre-testing. It also helps to review all your questions before you field your survey, and make sure that you really need all of them in the final survey. Sometimes you won’t know what to do with the information that you collect on a particular question, so drop it from your survey for this round: you can always field another survey in the future once you figure out what to do with this additional question.

Take a moment and go online and search for “worst survey questions ever.” That will open your eyes to some of the worst examples and things to avoid.