Ever since businesses began to pay attention to this new fad called social media a few years back (or a few too late), many have wanted a way to accurately measure their brands’ influences across social platforms. And why not? Metrics rule the business world, and the majority of the businesses I’ve ever worked with are way more obsessed with measurable stats than they are with the immeasurable good will social media engagement should engender for them (assuming they did it right, of course). There have been a handful of tools here and there that purport to help with this; TruCast comes to mind. But this week, as the Times relates, there’s a new kind on the block that claims to provide the most accurate social media analysis.

Appropriately named, “Social Media Analytics,” the new product comes from the SAS Institute (no idea what “SAS” stands for), who may indeed be more trustworthy when it comes to analytics, having provided them to businesses for almost 35 years. Basically, it’s what you would expect. Social Media Analytics combs blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and a whole bunch of other social platforms for relevant brand commentary or references, providing this data to the user. SAS touts exactly seven different advantages the product offers in its press release (which you can read, here), but really the most interesting and/or beneficial features are…

1) Right out of the box, it indexes and analyzes up to two years worth of social media data

2) Part of its analysis is an influence factor – telling you how influential the individual (or organization) who provided a particular comment or blog post is

3) It forecasts future social media conversations around your brand and predicts the impact they will have

and 4) It provides real-time data through web-based dashboards, reports, and alerts

Of course, similar existing tools do some of the same. But as the Times notes, SAS’s edge comes not necessarily in the product’s features, but in the accuracy of the data it provides. According to the head of one communications measurement and research company, while other products analytics provide only about 72% accurate when compared with actual human readers, SAS’s provides about 90% accuracy. Combine that kind of automated accuracy with the insight of the human being or beings reviewing the data, and it sounds like SAS’s product can help you get a pretty good handle on what’s being said about your brand, who’s saying it, how much influence they have, and what current and past conversations mean for the future. Plus, SAS claims that Social Media Analytics can integrate into your company’s CRM program (if it has one), helping to link sentiment with actual customer data.

Not too bad at all.

So, if you’re in the market for a comprehensive social media analytics tool, it sounds like you could do a lot worse than the one whose name couldn’t get any more literal.

For a video demo of Social Media Analytics, check out SAS’s site.