Social Media Monitoring Tools - An Evaluation

Do you have a clear understanding of what is beinganalyzed at a glance. Filtrbox can be placed in the
said about your brand throughout the Web? If yoursame league as Trackur. Website:
answer is yes, congratulations, you're a step ahead ofPricing: Contact Filtrbox.
many others. Make sure you keep ahead and profitOverall rating: Tool for companies who want to go
off the benefits. If your answer is no, start as soon asfurther than the free tools and want only the core
possible understanding your landscape and whatabilities for Social Media Monitoring.
intelligence could be extracted from the WebBrandsEye: More and better results than Trackur.
concerning your brand.Brandseye offers the possibility to mark irrelevant
The Social Media monitoring market is in the innovation& SPAM entries. The system has many options
early adopter stage; many companies are building anto analyze your entries, so you need to invest time to
ORM (Online Reputation Management) system. Theget acquainted with all the options. BrandsEye offers
market is forecast on a total of 60 million GBP thistwo extra tools, Firefox extension and Recent
year. Due to this "hype" and need for such a system,Mentioned Gadget, I did not use them vastly, but handy
there is an abundance which makes the choice moretools! The results are quite good, again, the coverage is
difficult.far from complete, but the returned entries are often
The last year I've been testing a couple of Socialmuch more relevant. BrandsEye offers the possibility
Media monitoring systems and below is an evaluationto add RSS feeds so it will keep on finding results (as
of the tools.mentioned before, I knew I posted on a blog), if the
I'm testing simple tools like Google Alerts, Yahoo!system doesn't find the entries initially and automated.
Alerts, Blog Search, Technorati Search and DeliciousThis is a work around, but good that they thought of it.
versus the advanced tools: Trackur, BrandsEye, SM2Website:
and Filtrbox.Pricing: starting from $1 per month to keep track of 5
The major difference between the two lies in thephrases/keywords.
amount of possibilities offered by the tools to analyzeOverall rating: A basic 'advanced' tool which offers
and act upon the output. Disappointing was themuch more than many others. A good
(relatively) low coverage of all the systems, for me thisvalue-for-money proposition.
is important so that I have the most completeSM2: This system has the most options of all the four
overview of what is happening. I tested the coveragetested systems, charts and graphs are available in the
by posting and commenting on blogs and other socialsystem. A great addition to this system are the
media platforms with certain keywords, after a monthSentiment tools, Brand References, Content Tone,
or two, by far all the postings were found.Content Emotions offer you a wide variation of
The simple tools are easy in use, you set up alerts onapproaches to analyse and understand your entries.
keywords and the results are delivered through email.SM2 offers a full-fludged monitoring system for
Basically automating the process of searching andcompanies who are keen to deeply understand their
being kept up to date, the qualitative analysis of thetarget market, brand perception and has the ability to
results must be executed by the person. If you haven'tspend enough time (and money) in the system. The
started yet, start with one of those services, they'reresults are good! Website:
easy in set up and hardly cost you time. In thePricing: starting from $600 per month to keep track of
meantime you can orientate on the more advanced5 phrases/keywords.
(paid) tools. The basis of these tools is the same asOverall rating: Superb system, take your time to learn
the simple tools, track keywords throughout the socialand understand it.
sphere.Conclusions:
Trackur: The system is very easy in use and not a lotIt's good to know where the conversations take place,
of options besides the basic ones (which are the mostif brands are visible, check out competitors. No 100%
important of course) The results were poor because itcoverage, but better than the basic (free) tools, the
returned too many irrelevant entries, besides this, it didtools give companies trend insights throughout their
not find many targeted entries which were about themarkets. Marketing and advertising agencies can
keywords. You can't mark something as Irrelevant orinclude Online Reputation Management tools within their
Spam so that the system can update itself. (I stoppedcurrent offer (free or paid), but white label solutions are
using this system for quite a while, it can be very wellnot widely available yet. (Reputation Monitor &
the case that Trackur has updated itself massively,SM2 offers white label solutions). Prices are relatively
this is only an expression of my experience). Website:cheap, agencies can offer a better service to their
Pricing: starting from $18 per month to keep track of 3clients when incorporating Social Media Monitoring tools
phrases/keywords.to have a better understanding and response for the
Overall rating: Tool for companies who want to goclients.
further than the free tools and want only the coreOur society is getting increasingly connective and
abilities for Social Media Monitoring.responsive, tap into the vast source and apply to it all
Filtrbox: I'm testing Filtrbox Basic. The intuitive, Webkinds of company goals and departments (like
2.0-ish interface which works well. What stands outcustomer and market intelligence, customer service,
directly is the low amount of entries returned, themarket research, brand recognition etc)!
entries that are returned are categorized and can be