Top 20 social media monitoring vendors for business
Data galore: A screen grab from Radian6.
A rare comparison of the major monitoring & engagement
services: Radian6, Lithium, Attensity360 & 17 more
Target audience: Brands, corporations, mid-size to large businesses. See Socialbrite’s series on social media monitoring:
• Guide to monitoring social media conversations
• 20 free, awesome social media monitoring tools
• 10 paid social media monitoring services for nonprofits
By J.D. Lasica and Kim Bale
Socialmedia.biz
The online landscape is saturated with more than 200 tools and platforms claiming to be able to help you track and assess mentions of your business or brand in social media channels. While there remains a lot of churn in the field, a number of listening platforms have evolved to help you go beyond basic monitoring into an integrated approach that helps inform multiple parts of your business: product development, customer support, public outreach, lead generation, market research and campaign measurement.
Born as a way to respond to crises and manage brand reputation, social media monitoring, or brand monitoring — which ties into social media measurement and analysis — is finally maturing into a business process that helps the bottom line.
A comparison of pricing, features & clients you rarely see on the open Web.Today we’ll turn the tables on these companies and offer some business intelligence that you rarely see available on the open Web: a comparison of social media monitoring vendors, with descriptions of their strengths, clients and pricing. Many offer end-to-end solutions, providing not just tracking capabilities but a rich set of analytics and response tools to help you grow your business and engage with individuals who influence broad swaths of the market.
Social media monitoring vendors come in all shapes and flavors. Some cater to small business with modest budgets that want to handle monitoring analysis internally. Others service global corporations that want access to expert analysts as well as a robust suite of social tools that plug into business processes. So this roundup is admittedly mixing apples and oranges. (See our discussion of social CRM below.)
To draw some distinctions, we’ve broken this package into two groupings:
• 20+ social media monitoring & engagement vendors for business (below)
• 10 lower-priced monitoring services for nonprofits & organizations (on our sister site, Sociabrite.org)
Monitoring should plug into your business processes
Companies that will succeed in the 21st century will be social businesses, committed to forging deep and meaningful relationships with their customers. So use the new year as a fresh impetus to create a Social Media Plan (Socialmedia.biz can help with that), begin monitoring and consider evaluating an outside vendor by signing up for a free trial.
Keep in mind: Listening to conversations and gathering data is only one phase of a multi-step process that also involves engagement, metrics and acting on what you learn. As Jeff Nolan writes, “In its most pure form, social media monitoring is both listening and responding to social channels.”
Here is our guide to the Top 20 Social Media Monitoring Vendors for Business. Have your own favorites? Please add them in the comments below! And if you have any corrections or updates to the information here, please share that as well.
Radian6: A proven solution for big brands
1Canada-based Radian 6 works with brands to help them listen more intelligently to your consumers, competitors and influencers with the goal of growing your business via detailed, real-time insights. Beyond their monitoring dashboard, which tracks mentions on more than 100 million social media sites, they offer an engagement console that allows you to coordinate your internal responses to external activity by immediately updating your blog and Twitter and Facebook accounts all in one spot. Fully automated. Cost: The dashboard starts at $600/month, though registered nonprofits can apply for two free uses per year under the company’s Giving Back program. They also offer free trials to students and educators for research and project purposes. Radian6 uses a monthly subscription based pricing model, with the monthly fee varying depending on the number of topics monitored each month. Clients: Red Cross, Adobe, AAA, Cirque du Soleil, H&R Block, March of Dimes, Microsoft, Pepsi, Southwest Airlines — a wide range of clients. Owner: Independent. Also: See our interview with the CEO of Radian6.
Collective Intellect: Social media intelligence gathering
2Boulder, Colo.-based Collective Intellect, which started out by providing monitoring to financial firms, has evolved into a top-tier player in the marketplace of social media intelligence gathering. Using a combination of self-serve client dashboards and human analysis, Collective Intellect offers a robust monitoring and measurement tool suited to mid-size to large companies with its Social CRM Insights platform. It applies spam management techniques and text analysis to clean data sets, delivering customers rich intelligence.Cost: Pricing starts at $300/month and scales based on specific client needs, according to published reports. Clients: General Mills, NBC Universal, Pepsi, Walmart, Unilever, Advertising Age, CBS, Dole, MTV Networks, MillerCoors, Paramount, Verizon Wireless, Viacom, Hasbro, Siemens. Owner: Independent.
Lithium: Adjust your campaign on the fly
3Lithium monitors your search-specific mentions and sentiment in social media outlets and outputs them into easy-to-read graphs and numbers resembling the stock market. Lithium will aggregate information from a variety of platforms including blog posts and comments, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and many others, and it’ll assess emotions surrounding your brand pre-, mid- and post campaign so you can adjust your strategies accordingly. We miss ScoutLabs, which is now part of Lithium. Cost: Base plan of $249/month for five users and five searches. Free 14-day trial. Clients: Best Buy, BT, Barnes & Noble, FICO, Disney Online, Stubhub, Motorola, Coca Cola, Focus Features, Netflix. Owner: Independent. Lithium bought ScoutLabs in May 2010.
Sysomos: Manage conversations in real time
4Sysomos’s Heartbeat is a real-time monitoring and measurement tool that provides constantly updated snapshots of social media conversations delivered using a variety of user-friendly graphics. Heartbeat organizes conversations, manages workflow, facilitates collaboration and provides ways to engage with key influencers. For more, see ReadWrite review. Sysomos also offers a Media Analysis Platform. Cost: Entry-level price of $500/month. Clients: IBM, HSBC, Roche, Ketchum, Sony Ericsson, Philips, ConAgra, Edelman, Shell Oil, Nokia, Sapient, Citi, Interbrand. Owner: Marketwire.
Attensity360: Actionable insights
5Attensity360 operates on four key principles: listen, analyze, relate, act. Attensity360 will help monitor trending topics, influencers and the reach of your brand while recommending ways to join the conversation. Attensity Analyze applies text analytics to unstructured text to extract meaning and uncover trends. Attensity Respond helps automate the routing of incoming social media mentions into user-defined queues. Cost: $399/month for one license. Discounts for longer subscriptions. Free 15-day trial. Clients: Whirlpool, Vodofone, Versatel, TMobile, Oracle, Wiley. Owner: Independent. Attensity bought Biz360 in spring 2010.
Alterian SM2: Providing daily brand sentiment
6UK-based Alterian SM2 tracks mentions on blogs, forums, social networks like Facebook, microblogs like Twitter, wikis, video and photo sharing sites, Craigslist and ePinions. SM2 monitors the daily volume, demographics, location, tone and emotion of conversations surrounding a brand and aggregates results into positive and negative categories for quick review by anyone on staff. Cost: Pricing is based on volume of results and ranges from $500/month to $15,000/month. “Freemium” trial plan allows for five keyword or phrase searches and a total of 1,000 results. Alterian also provides additional custom solutions. Clients: Rosetta, MDAnderson, Pursuit, YouCast. Owner: Independent. Alterian bought Techrigy in July 2009.
Crimson Hexagon: Actionable data for your business
7Cambridge, Mass.-based Crimson Hexagon taps into billions of conversations taking place in online media and turns them into actionable data for better brand understanding and improvement. Based on a technology licensed from Harvard, its VoxTrot Opinion is able to analyze vast amounts of qualitative information and determine quantitative proportion of opinion. Cost: Pricing based on number of seats or number of searches. Clients: CNN, Hanes, AT&T, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Mashable, Microsoft, Monster, AdWeek, Thomson Reuters, Rubbermaid, Sybase, the Huffington Post, A&E, the Wall Street Journal. Owner: Independent.
Spiral16: Flexible pricing, competitive analysis
8Spiral16 takes an in-depth look at who is saying what about a brand and compares results with those of top competitors. The goal is to help you monitor the effectiveness of your social media strategy, understand the sentiment behind conversations online and mine large amounts of data. It uses impressive 3D displays and a standard dashboard. Cost: Pricing starts at $500 for five queries or Internet searches, though there is no solid pricing model and Spiral16 will work with companies to tailor plans that fit their budget. Online demo available. Clients: Toyota, Lee, Cadbury. Owner: Independent.
Webtrends: Mobile & social analytics
9Webtrends offers services geared toward monitoring, measuring, analyzing, profiling and targeting audiences for a brand. The partner-based platform allows for crowd-sourced improvements and problem solving, creating transparency of their products and services. Cost: Pricing varies depending on packages and services chosen, but Webtrends is geared to big players. Social Accelerator packages start at $15,000/year, app packages start at $1,500 to $12,000/year. Clients: CBS, NBC Universal, 20th Century Fox, AOL, Electronic Arts, Lifetime, AA, Glam, Nestle, the City of Calgary. Owner: Independent.
Spredfast: Campaign & social media management
10We weren’t sure whether to include Spredfast in this Top 20 roundup because of its versatility. it’s not only a monitoring service but a social media management, measurement and campaign tool — in other words, a full-on social media dashboard and integrated communications client (Threadsy is another). In the end, Spredfast made the cut because you can pull relevant conversations from multiple networks into your dashboard, track referrals and conversions, summon up analytics and jump straight to analysis and reports. See our recent full review. Cost: Pricing begins at $250/month for businesses. Clients: AOL, Nokia, IBM, Sierra Club. Owner: Independent start-up.
NM Incite: Going for depth
11Global brands look to NM Incite‘s expertise across marketing, sales, product development, customer service, business strategy development and in deep verticals for monitoring and social media intelligence. This is a service geared to multinationals rather than nonprofits or mid-size companies. Cost: Five figures is typical. Clients: Toyota, ConAgra, Intel, Sony, Nokia, AOL, HBO, Barclays, Whirlpool, GE, Discovery, Coca-Cola. Owner: NM Incite is a joint venture of the Nielson Co. and McKinsey & Co. Nielsen Buzzmetrics was spun off into NM Incite as part of its launch in June 2010.
Converseon: Tech + human analysts
12New York-based social-media consulting firm Converseon, named a leader in the social media monitoring sector by Forrester Research, builds tailored dashboards for its enterprise installations and offers professional services around every step of the social business intelligence process. Converseon starts with the technology and adds human analysis, resulting in high-quality data and impressive functionality. Cost: Pricey. Cost varies according to which suite is used. Clients: Dow, Amway, Graco, other major brands. Converseon has more than 200,000 customers and 10,000 channel partners in 100 countries. Owner: Independent.
dna13: An emphasis on simplicity
13Ottawa-based dna13‘s MediaVantage will monitor all of your media coverage and present it in an easy-to-read format allowing you to respond from one platform. dna13 provides on-demand software solutions for brand and reputation management, including a PR and corporate communications software suite and a monitoring service for real-time insight into brand, reputation, competitors and industry issues. Cost: Packages start at $560/month. Initial $500 set-up fee. Clients: Wachovia, Miami Heat. Owner: CNW Group Co.
Attentio
145-year-old Belgium-based Attentio tracks global conversations taking place across social media (blogs, forums, social networks, Twitter, YouTube) and online news sites. The multilingual service offers brand reputation management, campaign/product release impact, sales opportunity tracking and sentiment analysis along with a dashboard to track media in real time. Cost: Pricing starts at £500 ($775 US) per month for a one-year subscription; costs for tailored reports begin at £5,000 ($7,750) . Clients: Johnson & Johnson, Skype, Microsoft, Disney. Owner: Independent.
Visible Technologies: High-end monitoring & analysis
15In the fall 2010 Visible Technologies replaced its truCAST technology with Visible Intelligence, its new enterprise social intelligence platform and services. The new platform helps clients monitor, analyze and participate in social media conversations as well as protect their executive and corporate brands online. Visible adds analyst support to their client servicing to help you understand the landscape and determine which intelligence to act on. Arrange a demo via @Visible_Tech on Twitter. Cost: Typically $25,000 to $45,000, according to press reports. Clients: Microsoft, Vail Resorts, Xerox, Boost. Owner: Independent.
Cymfony: Enterprise-class monitoring platform
16Cymfony provides market influence analytics by scanning and interpreting the millions of voices at the intersection of social and traditional media. It offers a listening and influence platform, Maestro, that integrates distinctive technology with input from expert analysts to identify the people, issues and trends impacting a business. All the standard metrics are included: posts/conversations, tonality, influencers, share of voice and so on. Cost: Pricey but competitive with other deep monitoring and analytics firms. Clients: Fortune 2000 clients. (A lack of transparency may be telling.) Owner: A unit of Kantar Media.
Buzzcapture: Insights into market buzz
17Amsterdam-based Buzzcapture provides insight to organizations on the buzz in their market. Buzzcapture can track companies, products, product families, business lines, difficult or complex brands, topics, competitors, influencers, evangelists, critics and campaigns. All the information collected is analyzed and presented into understandable reports and entered into your dashboard. Cost: Typical price range is EU10,000 to EU70,000 ($13,000 to $91,000 US) for each research topic or group of products, with a standard license costing €30,000 ($39,000 US). Clients: TNT, Vodofone, ING, Nissan, BMW, Microsoft, AstraZeneca. Owner: Independent.
BuzzLogic: Tied to ad buy
18BuzzLogic uses its technology platform to identify and organize the conversation universe, combining both conversation topic and audience to help brands reach audiences who are passionate on everything from the latest tech craze and cloud computing to parenthood and politics. However, the social media monitoring tool is no longer available as a standalone product. It now comes as part of BuzzLogic’s ad platform, requiring a media buy to connect to unique audiences through BuzzLogic. Cost: Unknown. Clients: Starbucks, American Express, HBO, HP, Microsoft. Focus on advertisers. Owner: Independent.
Meltwater Buzz: Overseas strength
19Released in April 2009, Meltwater Buzz monitors, tracks and analyzes user-generated content on more than 200 million social media sites to help a brand understand its user sentiment and gauge competition. All data is stored in one intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard and a customer support representative is provided for the duration of the subscription. Meltwater, founded in Norway in 2001, now has 50 offices around the globe. It’s worth mentioning that they come from a traditional media tracking background, and with purchase of BuzzGain in February 2010, they added many more social media monitoring capabilities. BuzzGain is now baked into Meltwater Buzz. Cost: Standard subscription of one year for $13,000 gets you access for three to five users. Clients: Porsche Automotive North America, Vita-Mix, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Bausch & Lomb, Pabst Blue Ribbon and other corporations, nonprofits, government agencies. Owner: Meltwater Group.
Brandwatch: A focus on brand mentions
20UK-based Brandwatch trawls the Internet looking at news, blogs, forums, wikis and social networking sites and finding mentions of brands, companies, products and people. Clients define keywords (brands, topics, people names, products) and receive reports and brand summaries that they can take action on. Cost: Pricing, based on a monthly subscription, starts at about $300/month. It operates on a per keyword pricing model. Clients: Aviva, Activision, CheapFlights, The Body Shop. Owner: Independent.
Note: BuzzGain, which was originally listed at No. 19, has been absorbed into Meltwater.
Social CRM or simply monitoring services?
In this overview I sought to avoid the insidery, wonky discussion around social CRM (customer relationship management), but it’s worth a quick mention. Paul Greenberg, organizer of the first Social CRM Summit last year, explains SCRM this way:
Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.
Jacob Morgan, principal of Chess Media Group, points out that social CRM means different things to different people. While the vendors listed above offer robust social media monitoring and listening tools, they plug into their clients’ business and social CRM processes in different ways (see Chess Media’s chart above and its free Guide to Understanding Social CRM).
“Two years ago, all the vendors you mentioned called themselves social media vendors,” Morgan said. “Now that social CRM is the hot term, all of the vendors simply changed the name from social media to social CRM. Everything else is the same.”
Other paid social media monitoring solutions
There are literally dozens of social media monitoring services in the marketplace, so this roundup is meant as a guide to the top-tier vendors rather than a comprehensive list. If you’ve had success with other vendors, please mention them in the comments below.
Disclaimer: We have worked with some, but not all, of the companies above; in such cases, we’ve based our assessment on recommendations from colleagues, pricing and perceived value. Please note that many of the other monitoring vendors listed outside the Top 20 also deserve consideration, based on your company’s specific needs, costs, features and if you find a good cultural and personality fit.
Our accompanying piece in this package on Socialbrite, 10 paid monitoring services for nonprofits and organizations, offers short capsule reviews of Trackur, Thrive, eCairn, Hootsuite, BuzzStream and other monitoring services.
You may have good results with some of these additional services:
• Amplified Analytics: This tool is geared chiefly toward product reviews and marketers interested in tracking reviews across multiple sites.
• Appinions: “Automatically filters and aggregates thoughts, feelings and statements from traditional and social media.”
• Atlassian: Australian-based software company with global reach, offers tools to track, test and collaborate on the social Web.
• Bit.ly Pro: The Pro version offers custom short links like pep.si (for Pepsi) and 4sq.com (for Foursquare), a dashboard that lets you monitor the real-time aggregate traffic of your shared content across the bit.ly universe, and easy integration with tools like Tweetdeck and CoTweet.
• Cision: Cision (formerly Bacon’s Information) monitors social, print, broadcast and online media outlets, then organizes the information, which a dedicated analyst delivers to a company’s in-box every day via an executive news briefing. Cision searches more than 100 million sources to assess conversations about a brand. Clients include UCLA, Gerber and R&R Partners.
• CustomScoop: BuzzPerception: A veteran in the media monitoring space, CustomScoop monitors traditional and social media, calling themselves the “leading application for online news clipping.” BuzzPerception includes a phase of human filtering to generate the most relevant results for a brand. Pricing starts at $299/month. Jen Zingsheim, a representative, provides this update: “While we started out as a traditional media ‘clipping service,’ we’ve been including blog content for years and also monitor Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more. We can tailor reporting to fit client needs, and have a robust suite of analytical tools, too — along with a free, 2-week trial to see if we fit your needs.”
• Digimind: Digimind designs and develops Digimind Evolution, a Competitive Intelligence Management software platform that enables companies to deploy and to manage competitive intelligence units and projects.
• Dow Jones Insight, owned by News Corporation, touts a wide array of languages and geographies, a global footprint and a less-than-stellar dashboard. Its hefty $5,000/month pricetag is based on the fact that it’s heavily based on analysts’ involvement.
• Evolve24 is a competitive listening platform that specializes in reputation management. Evolve24 is a smaller player in the market with only about 20 customers but its customer base consists of large enterprise-level installations.
• FindAgent: Founded in 2002, UK-based FindAgent specializes in digital media monitoring and media analysis. Focusing purely on online content, the company, owned by OpenAmplify, has developed technologies to find, analyze and manage mentions in social media and traditional media. More than 500 companies use FindAgent’s semantic text analysis technology.
• iCrossing is a global digital marketing agency that combines talent and technology to help world-class brands find and connect with their customers.
• Jive: Jive Software, which acquired Filtrbox in 2010, offers a host of social media monitoring options.
• Moreover Technologies: Moreover and its Newsdesk 4 offer tools for media monitoring, reputation management, market and competitive intelligence and content sharing from 1.8 million sources.
• MotiveQuest: At the high end of monitoring services, MotiveQuest typically charges $70,000 per project, according to published reports. CEO David Rabjohns says MotiveQuest provides a full range of services. “You don’t have to use a dashboard. Just come to us with a business problem and we will help you find relevant insights. The core of our approach is digging beneath the buzz and the sentiment to identify primal human motivations. We have identified that these most strongly affect sales and share.” Clients include Microsoft, Nike, Citi, Audi and Kraft. MotiveQuest is positioned in the Strong Performer category in a 2006 Forrester report and it has a Slideshare presentation on leveraging motivations in social media.
• MutualMind: A relative newcomer, MutualMind helps marketers, agencies and PR firms track discussions, understand sentiment, identify influencers and use the resulting insights to improve positioning and marketing strategy. Pricing ranges from $500 to several thousand dollars per month.
• NetBase offers social media analysis tools that help marketing and sales professionals to understand consumer opinion, emotion and behavior online.
• Nimble is an LA-based start-up due to come out of private beta soon with a promising set of monitoring capabilities across multiple networks. Says Nimble’s Maria Ogneva: “We tie monitoring to the customer record. The real beauty is that you can monitor based on a keyword, respond as you need and even create a task right from the social media mention — whether it happens to be a tweet, FB message, LI message — which can be edited, calendared, delegated and commented on for team workflow that ties back to the record — the key ingredient here.”
• Optify is a real time marketing applications suite that offers several features to help you track, monitor and measure the success of your social media activities.
• ReputationDefender: The company offers four suites of online reputation management and privacy controls.
• RepuMetrix specializes in tracking online mentions that are perceived to be harmful to a brand’s reputation. Pricing starts at $350/month for one user.
• RepuTrack: RepuTrack is a reputation monitoring service that tracks and analyzes the conversation around a brand and delivers it in an actionable way.
• SAS Sentiment Analysis Manager: Part of SAS Text Analytics program, the Sentiment Analysis Manager “crawls content sources, including mainstream Web sites and social media outlets, as well as internal organizational text sources [and] creates reports that describe the expressed feelings of consumers, customers and competitors in real time.”
• Sentiment Metrics: United Kingdom-based company provides tools to listen to consumer conversations across more than 20 million blogs, 5 million forum posts and 30,000 online news sources, social networks and microblogs, including Twitter. Clients include Sony, Subaru and HSBC.
• Trendrr: Mostly focused on the entertainment community, Trendrr lets you track the popularity and awareness of trends across a variety of channels, ranging from social networks to blog buzz and video views downloads, all in real time. You can also have Trendrr do a Social Media Audit, providing an analysis of your social media presence, dissecting volume of mentions, sentiment, links, influencers, demographics and more. Pricing: $499 and $999/month, with enterprise package beginning at $2,499/month. NBC Universal’s Oxygen TV show “Bad Girls Club” is a client. Owner: Wiredset LLC.
Look for a shakeout in the field very soon. Other monitoring services include Attensa, Beevolve, blueReport, BrandsEye, Buzzient, CustomScoop, CyberAlert, Memery’s Dialogix (from Australia), Filtrbox, Imooty, Infegy Social Radar, InfoNgen, Ingage Networks, Jungle Torch, Lexalytics, ListenLogic, Looxii, Market Sentinel, MediaMiser, MutualMind, Networked Insights, Noteca, Position2 Brand Monitor, Press Army, ReputationHQ, Scup, Silverbakk, Social Report, Sprinklr, StrategyEye, Synthesio, Trendrr, Viralheat and Whitevector.
— Maria Ogneva, who heads up social media for Nimble, provided input for this article. Updated and revised on Jan. 13, 2011.
Related
• Radian6 and the Yellow Brick Road for Brands — our interview with the CEO of Radian6 (Socialmedia.biz)
• Spredfast: A tool to organize your conversations (Socialmedia.biz)
• Biz360 (now Attensity360): Tracking business intelligence (Socialmedia.biz)
• Top 10 social media dashboard tools (Socialbrite)
• 14 free tools to measure your social influence (Socialbrite)
• Social media monitoring: Articles (Socialbrite)
• Social media metrics: Articles (Socialbrite)
• The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms, Q3 2010 (PDF)
JD Lasica is founder of Socialmedia.biz. We work with large companies and nonprofits on social media strategies and campaigns. See JD’s business profile, contact him or leave a comment.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.
Tweet-roll
Great post here. Thanks for pulling this together. I've already sent it to others as a resource. Thanks again.
Comment by Jeff Tippett
—
January 12, 2011 @
6:37 am
In addition to the SAS Sentiment Analysis Manager mentioned in the article, SAS also offers a Social Media Analytics solution which provides greater functioanlity for brand management. SAS Social Media Analytics integrates, analyzes and enables organizations to act on intelligence gleaned from online conversations occurring across professional and consumer-generated media sites. It enables organizations to attribute online conversations to specific parts of their business, allowing an accelerated response to shifts in the marketplace.
Comment by @jdruotolo — January 12, 2011 @ 6:48 am
This is a fantastic, collective list. Candidly, there are some listening tools here I'm not even familiar with.
Is this list in order of those you feel are the "best"? Meaning, in your opinion is Radian6 the "best of the best"?
Comment by @Social_Citizen
—
January 12, 2011 @
7:07 am
VMS, the broadcast monitoring company, now has a social media monitoring product that allows you monitor social media alone, or pay to monitor ALL media on one platform. The social media part uses the Attensity360 engine.
Comment by Ken Brady
—
January 12, 2011 @
8:28 am
Hi J.D. & Kim!
Wow, what a great list! It's resources like these that really give the community a great overview of what's available to them when they first enter social media. Thanks very much for including us :)
All the best,
Genevieve Coates
Community Analyst – Radian6
Comment by @genevievecoates
—
January 12, 2011 @
8:49 am
Great Post. I have used Hootsuite and a few others before, but will give Radian a try. Good to see the business models for social media BI solutions are evolving.
Comment by Jeremy Andrews
—
January 12, 2011 @
10:42 am
Thanks for including Sysomos in this awesome list!
Cheers,
Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos
Comment by 40deuce
—
January 12, 2011 @
10:42 am
Thanks very much, James. It was hard to position this article — you're right, monitoring without analytics and engagement doesn't count for much.
Comment by jdlasica
—
January 12, 2011 @
11:53 am
Hi. Yes, that's the intent, with a big caveat: Any such list is highly subjective. It all depends on the specific needs of the client: feature set, pricing, how it plugs into their current business processes, cultural fit, and so on. And as we say, we're somewhat mixing apples and oranges here. But of the 200 services out there, these were the ones that we thought offered the most value.
Comment by jdlasica
—
January 12, 2011 @
11:56 am
J.D. and Kim,
Great job on the list and breakdown of the info. I would love to hear from you both on Brandtology's Social Media Monitoring Services (http://www.brandtology.com/our-difference/how-brandtology-can-help/) that focus on building custom crawlers that can help monitor niche social media communities that are important for B2B clients outside popular social media sites and provide additional human-sentiment verification and reporting services spanning the entire globe. I'd be glad to share more info with you :)
Cheers,
Jay
Brandtology
Comment by Jay
—
January 12, 2011 @
11:58 am
We're big fans of Radian6, Genevieve, and included a link to our interview with Marcel at the bottom. Continued success!!
Comment by jdlasica
—
January 12, 2011 @
11:58 am
Sure, that was an easy decision. :~)
Comment by jdlasica
—
January 12, 2011 @
11:58 am
Wow, this list is amazingly helpful. I've been trying to do this type of vetting myself and it's a tireless effort. Something I'm really interested in, is the accuracy of sentiment analysis. The consensus seems to be that all automated tools are unreliable, while human-powered systems seem to jack up cost and time considerably.
A follow-up post I'd love to see is once you have these tools, how do you turn their data and slick graphs into easily actionable recommendations for executives.
Comment by Shanee Ben-Zur
—
January 12, 2011 @
1:29 pm
I am interested to know which listening tool most agencies use to get snapshot reports instead of day-to-day analysis. Looking for something for overal brand and employment brand direction instead of campaign tracking right now. I've already used Radian 6, Alterian SM2, HootSuite, and other free tools such as Klout.
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Trackback by SHOP ELECTRONICS!!! — February 26, 2011 @ 2:58 pm
Thanks- Ive been looking for a list like this.Much appreciated.
Comment by Ryan
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April 30, 2011 @
5:03 am
NM Incite is a leader in analytics around brand needs regarding social media. We have analyst that are dedicated to each vertical that provide deep insights to our clients business needs through social media research. We excel in brand insights (Pre, during and post launch), category and competitor analysis, lexicon and advertising message development and much more. We are also the leader in white space analysis, an example is finding unmet customer needs or off label product usage. Our most recent case study is with Sony around monitoring brand health called brand advocacy quotient.
Sheldon
Comment by @SheldonNJones
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May 20, 2011 @
7:29 am
I echo the sentiments expressed here – this is a great, comprehensive, and helpful post – especially as someone who is "in the market."
There are two things that really stand out to me here: the first is that Microsoft seems to be a customer of many of these tools. I think someone needs to reach out to their procurement group – they seem to be wasting some money :)
The second is the sheer range in pricing. I'm curious to understand how some of these solutions cost $300/month, and some cost $15000/month, and seem to contain very similar feature sets. Can you elaborate on what the price differences typically mean? Volume of results? Archiving? Number of searches? Number of seats? I worry that some that appear to be at the low end will actually end up being very expensive, but my budget is tight.
Many thanks -
Comment by Leigh
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June 2, 2011 @
10:53 am
Indeed Very informative article on Social Media tools.
I would like to add little insight about our Tool.
We own one of the most innovative social media analytics, engagement and campaign software called Simplify360 (http://simplify360.com/ ). Simplify360° Offers a one stop solution to the social media needs of a business and lets you engage with your customers and interpret your social presence. This not only monitor conversations on Twitter whereas on all other Social networking platforms.
This tool allows you to View the overall Trend and Download the data on Excel Format, Overall Sentiment of the Brand, Map Overlay of mentions and conversations, Individual Channel's Report and Advance Filter Option Available, User can view the trend in sentiments and compare between negative and positive trend and many other Insights.
Cost: Pricing starts at $49 and scales based on the client requirements and needs
Owner: Inrev Systems
Thanks
Kavya Kundalia Bisht
Community Manager, Simplify360
Comment by Kavya Kundalia Bisht
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June 24, 2011 @
3:31 am
Unfortunately, you folks missed out JamiQ for multilingual Asian language social media monitoring. Check out http://jamiq.com.
Comment by Kelvin Quee
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June 28, 2011 @
10:38 pm
Well, looks like we didn't miss out since you told us about it, thanks for the contribution, Kelvin!
Comment by jdlasica
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June 28, 2011 @
11:28 pm
You can also check out Social Insights by Fuseware, which has a great focus on social CRM and engagement. It really drills down to find out who your brand influencers are, and how best to engage with them.
Also, a useful post is the 10 pitfalls of using social media monitoring: http://www.fuseware.net/social-media-monitoring-p…
Comment by Social Media Tool
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July 11, 2011 @
12:08 pm
I'm glad you included a review of the Social CRM with this post. There's a natural meeting of sCRM and monitoring that really requires an end-to-end service, so it's essential to look at both sides of the industry.
Comment by Luke Brynley-Jones
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July 24, 2011 @
6:54 am
I have already some of the tools included in the list.radian 6 was great in my business research and internet marketing.
Comment by Raphnexx Gasal
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August 10, 2011 @
11:44 pm
Thanks for mentioning Meltwater Buzz!
Comment by @brrhodes — August 16, 2011 @ 1:54 pm
[...] a that monitoring system comprehensively and quickly delivers real-time negative [...]
Pingback by 7 Guidelines For Handling Negative Reviews - Macali Communications — August 25, 2011 @ 6:09 am
Surprised that Mutual Mind didn't make the top 20. They were in the top 5 in our Social Media Monitoring Tools buyer's guide released today: http://www.webliquidgroup.com/social-media-monito…
Comment by Paul Burani
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September 14, 2011 @
2:02 pm
In my opinion after using Radian6, Meltwater Buzz and Brandwatch – Brandwatch is the clear winner. The advanced operators are a gods ends (I've managed to make the results for one HUGE client 99.9% relevant) and the speed in which is evolving is astounding!
Brandwatch being at the bottom of the list is highly misleading since this is the case.
Comment by David Robertson
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October 3, 2011 @
8:02 am
This is a great list. Also checkout http://techarda.com/software/categories/Social-Me… . We have tried to cover product vendors as well as things to look for when making your buying decisions. web site is collaborative so you can add your product if it is missing.
cheers,
Sanjay
@techarda
Comment by Sanjay_Hora
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October 11, 2011 @
12:38 pm
This is an awesome list for social media tracking. Very useful for small businesses. Tracking your social media can be overwhelming and this article put everything needed in one place. Thanks for posting this.
Comment by chatmeter
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October 12, 2011 @
10:49 am
Hello JD & Kim,
Thank you very much for sharing this valuable resource! It's very comprehensive and well-written.
I just wanna show you one more powerful tool: the new D9 from Digimind (http://www.Digimind.com). Beyond the strong features of social media monitoring, D9 provides also an effective and sophisticated system of competitive intelligence. It helps organizations to instantly collect then analyze critical competitive data.
For more information, please contact me at : vhoang@digimind.com. Looking forward to hearing from you.
@digimindci
Comment by Viet Hoang
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October 16, 2011 @
5:22 am
If you need to monitor specific keywords (such as brand names etc.) in social media please check out our brand new Social Media Monitor tool: http://informant.se/SocialMediaMonitor
You can try the tool online first in order to see what type of items will be generated. Extremely simple to setup and works in many languages.
Cheers,
Intelliwell AB http://www.intelliwell.com/
Comment by Intelliwell
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October 25, 2011 @
5:21 am
JD, you seem to have missed our tool Simplify360. http://simplify360.com is one of the top tool used by several agencies and clients in Asia.
Comment by @leplan — November 25, 2011 @ 10:00 pm
Great post. I prefer http://www.socialwatching.com because is very easy to setup email alerts and integrate with preferred news reader, also you have the possibility to view useful graphs about your company or your competitors evolution. I think it is another good alternative to the above.
Comment by vlad
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November 29, 2011 @
10:37 pm
You forgot to mention one more social media monitoring company that is Omllion.com. for more details pls log on to http://www.omllion.com
Comment by Abhishek
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December 2, 2011 @
9:00 pm
Position2 has just launched a free version of its platform that is featured in the list above. You can check it at http://www.position2.com
Comment by Vinod Nambiar
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December 6, 2011 @
4:30 am
Hello, really remarkable list of tools. In my opinion, the Alterian SM2 tool can be evaluated as a Top 5 tool in this list, because of good set of advanced industry features and good customer support.
In addition to this list, it is nice to have a look at AA rating. You can find all the information about features of these tools, support options and even market share information:
http://www.aboutanalytics.com/category/social-med…
It is the most updated information source in the online analytics market. Good luck!
Comment by Igors
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December 29, 2011 @
7:38 am
Try Actionly for affordable option to Social Media Monitoring. With our integration with Google analytics you can track your Social Media ROI. We also offer affordable White labeling options for agencies.
Plans range from free to $100/mo.
Actionly offers White labeling, Brand tracking across Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Flickr, YouTube etc and also allow managing multiple Twitter or Facebook accounts from our dashboard.
Schedulable reports, Email alerts, Sentiment analysis and many more are included in our featured list.
Try us out we do have a FREE account as well. Thx! http://www.actionly.com
Comment by sam abraham
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January 9, 2012 @
9:40 am
Try Actionly for affordable option to Social Media Monitoring. With our integration with Google analytics you can track your Social Media ROI. We also offer affordable White labeling options for agencies.
Plans range from free to $100/mo.
Actionly offers White labeling, Brand tracking across Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Blogs, Flickr, YouTube etc and also allow managing multiple Twitter or Facebook accounts from our dashboard.
Schedulable reports, Email alerts, Sentiment analysis and many more are included in our featured list.
Try us out we do have a FREE account as well. Thx! http://www.actionly.com
Comment by sam abraham
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January 16, 2012 @
8:11 pm
Opps! Great post.This is a collective list. These really are some awesome tools.
Is this list in order of those you feel are the "best"?
Comment by TIIF
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January 21, 2012 @
7:56 am
Hello J.D. Lasica and Kim Bale,
I believe you are missing an important player : Engagor http://engagor.com/
What is your opinion on that Social media Enterprise system?
Thanks,
Thierry
Comment by Thierry
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February 1, 2012 @
10:09 am
This is the most complete list of high quality social media monitoring / CRM platforms. Thanks a lot for putting it together!
Comment by Alex Zagoumenov
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March 10, 2012 @
1:58 am
JD & Kim,
Very splendid information about the social media and its effect on the present marketing scenario. thanks for all the messages and keep share with us many of such insights.
thanks
Anthony Raymond Cunningham
MD at http://www.cpssecurities.com.au/
Comment by anthony raymond C
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March 19, 2012 @
3:57 am
Great post, thanks a lot. Here's another one from mBLAST: mPACT Pro – http://www.mblast.com/mpact-pro.aspx.
Comment by Yuriy Gumen
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March 27, 2012 @
4:58 am
thanks,
free, rtsmm is my favorite. http://www.rtsmm.com
Comment by @conilost — May 9, 2012 @ 4:38 am