Social Media Monitoring Tool Buyer’s Guide

Posted by Matthew Cronin on September 14th, 2011

Today we released a bit of insight that I’m quite proud of – a first of its kind buyer’s guide for Social Media Monitoring tools. Our team takes these tools pretty seriously because it is a critically important aspect of the services we provide to our clients. They tune the tools we use with the same level of dedication that an F1 team maintains its car. Our people are Social Media Monitoring power-users and we realized that there are no good resources to help other power-users make decisions about the tools available to them. So we set about identifying and sifting through the myriad of services that claim to offer social media monitoring, in the hopes of providing some clarity to those looking to acquire such services.

It’s an increasingly important service as our recent Social Media Monitoring Survey shows, which means there’s a lot of competition for users and dollars. But we found that very few tools can suit the needs of Word-of-Mouth and Social Media researchers, marketers and brand managers who use social Media Monitoring tools to find legitimate insights that inform big decisions with serious downstream implications. In fact we started with a list of about 40 available tools and quickly narrowed it down to 5 that we believe can fit such a demanding requirement.

Our team set about putting these 5 tools through the paces in a systematic and controlled test allowing them to identify each tool’s strengths and weaknesses. The resulting analysis includes details on ease-of-use, data depth and breadth, data quality, SPAM management, resources efficiency and more. As a result, I think our team has set the bar for the Social Media Monitoring market with this buyer’s guide – highlighting important considerations buyers should keep in mind as well as pushing each tool to address the needs of the more sophisticated end of the market.

Each of the Social Media Monitoring providers that we tested deserves kudos for agreeing to take part in this buyer’s guide. Alterian, Brandwatch, MutualMind, Radian6 and Synthesio all let us take a hard look at their tools and speak honestly and objectively about our experiences. For the most part, they all shine in one way or another as we believe they represent the top-tier of the market. So this buyer’s guide truly does help the Social Media Monitoring tool buyer gain a better understanding of the tool that should best match their specific needs.

Click here to download your copy of the Social Media Monitoring Tool Buyer’s Guide.

Footnote: All of the Social Media Monitoring Tools considered for this Buyer’s Guide:

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