I have been working recently with Richard Lucas of Tangent90. Richard has compiled a concise review of Social media monitoring tools for the client and he has allowed me to share this review with you. So, thank you Richard....
Brandwatch
Overview :
Brandwatch enables the user to set keywords and start the search across websites and social media platforms. It includes scan search of Twitter, facebook, youtube Blogs, forum and news . brandwatch offers a user friendly interface, easy to set up. Sentiment accuracy in the standard market range. The tool offers a customisable dashboard to have all the available data in one view, and exports report in cvs and email format
£: Reasonably priced, from starting packages
Synthesio
Overview :
The syntesio platform offer a wide range of analysis tools. In addition to the standard sentiment analysis , number and localisation of mentions, it offers multilingual and multi-regional support.
The platform is user friendly and easy to set up
The sentiment analysis however, relies strongly on human intervention. The sysntesio team offers data analysis together with the subscription, and it doesn`t not come cheap. The system also, at the date of testing ( Spring 2011) presented numerous bugs.
£ : starting package expensive
Radian 6
Overview :
Radian 6 is possibly one on the most powerful social media monitoring tools on the market. As its competitors it offers sentiment analysis, customisable dashboards, and powerful data analysis across the widest range of sources, unlike its competitors , it can be integrated with Salesforce and webtrends. The reports can be exported as emails,cvs and PDFs
The learning experience with Radian 6 can be frustrating, with a steep learning curve, to utilise the tool in all its features.
£ : starting package expensive
Addictomatic
Overview :
Addictomatic is a free web app to locate content on the web based on any topic, event or subject and provides the users with a windows containing the mentions for the brand or topic searched.
Compared to the other mentioned tools, Addictomatic is more news and social media oriented, but it doesn`t offer the complex automatic operations as Brandwatch or Radian 6
The tool doesn`t offer a dashboard or sentiment analysis, and any further operation offered by other automatic tools, is left to the user.
£: free
iGoogle
Overview :
iGoogle is a free web app which requires quite a lot of customisation and configuration, it is meant as a consumer tool for managing a personal experience and not as a shared business tool.
£: free
Personal Mashup using WidgetBox
Overview :
WidgetBox is a collection of over tens of thousands of Widgets which can be turned into mobile Apps and into ‘Blog Embed’ Components for a simple low cost subscription.
Some widgets quickly hit the refresh limit on services such as Twitter and Google and so pages can be denied access to these services.
This requires the use of a Web Designer with basic knowledge of HTML and web design.
£: free
Postscript:
Since I wrote this post, I have been contacted by webfluenz - see below. I have reviewed it and it looks to me like a good value low cost tool that is certainly well worth considering. The costs start at $99, but rises based on numbers of users etc. This is the note they sent to me originally which includes a link tio the site
I came across your review on social media monitoring tools and wanted to bring a tool to your notice called webfluenz. I wanted to inquire about whether you will be interested in reviewing our tool. To give a brief introduction, webfluenz is a social media monitoring and measurement tool that allows users to listen, monitor and enagage with social media conversations in real-time. For more information, please visit our website (http://www.webfluenz.com/)