Nick Baggott's CRM and Digital Marketing Blog

Which social media monitoring tool should you use?

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/) 

New Linked In Privacy Settings Advice

Thanks to my LI friend, Debra Mann (@Debra_Mann) who sent this through to me. She has suggested we send it onto our LI contacts, so I thought this was the best place to share it...

Linkedin have very quietly introduced some new settings that potentially seriously affect your privacy and your ability to prevent unwanted emails (spam). These new settings are defaulted ON and include allowing Linkedin to use profile information, names and photos in third party advertising. Please see the links below for opting out. You might want to consider alerting your contacts on Linkedin.

To reach the hard-to-reach settings options the following URL's should take you directly to them (cut and paste into your browser if they don't work as live links)

You will be asked to login again with these links - that is totally ok - its only because you are going to your settings panel - just click on each link and UNTICK the checkbox that you see and click save - its very simple - honest!

Manage social advertising: https://www.linkedin.com/settings/?modal=nsettings-social-advertising&tab=account

Manage enhanced advertising: https://www.linkedin.com/settings/?modal=nsettings-enhanced-advertising&tab=account

Data sharing with third party applications: https://www.linkedin.com/settings/?modal=nsettings-data-sharing&tab=groups

Partner InMail: https://www.linkedin.com/settings/?modal=nsettings-partner-inmail&tab=email

 

Milwaukee Library great anti-social media spoof ads

You have got to love this campaign from Milwaukee library - very funny (thanks To Gravity Marketing for sharing these)

The Benefits of Social Media (McKinsey stats)

Just saw this in an excellent social CRM pdf from salesforce.com. Sent to me by my friend Paul Vernon at Oegen. It is from a McKinsey report from December 2010. It shows that companies who use social media achieve the following:

- increased marketing effectivenes & c-sat

- reducing marketing & support costs

- reducing tiome to market of new products

- increased innovation

- increased revenue

It still looks like the cost saving elements are driving the first four benefits on the chart below. I believe that if brands focused on using social media to build engagement and trust more and cost saving less, then they would drive the revenue number as well as reduce the costs. To do this, social media needs to be more integrated with traditional channels as part of an over arching CRM strategy. 

What do you think?

TWEET acronym - simple Twitter advice from Likeable Media

Thanks to Nick Barley (@nbarley on Twitter), for bringing this to my attention. Everyone loves an acronym....

At Likeable Media, there is a brief set of guidelines suggested to clients using Twitter, based around anacronym for the word “TWEET”:

Trust-building: Build relationships

Wisdom: Learn from industry leaders and your customers

Ears open: Listen to the conversation

Establish your brand: Create a strong presence

Teach the world about what you do

 

Some decent advice here - Build relationships is all about responding to positive and negative comments in a responsible way. Learn from industry leaders is good advice. Follow the spokespeople, journalists, analysts in your industry, but also follow customers, competitors and partners too. Then make sure you listen and learn. The final two points relate to what you should stay. Basically they are saying inform don't sell and do it often. Some good advice here for the New Year with my interpretation fo the 5 steps.