Online brand reputation or social media listening software - a review of 26 tools
- Configuring Google Analytics
- Using Facebook for Marketing
- How are businesses using Twitter
- E-marketing Excellence interviews on SEO, Email Marketing, Site design and social media
One of the defining features of 2009 for me personally is the power of Twitter to share ideas and tools with others. This post is a great example of this. I hope you find it useful. Please share your comments on which of these tools you have found effective or let us know about others that aren’t on the list.
The other defining feature for me in 2009, in the digital marketing world, is the growth in interest by marketers in how to listen to the conversations that customers have about their brands, particularly in social networks, forums and blogs.
Although I have been cataloguing online reputation management tools for 3 or 4 years now, I was conscious of the tremendous growth in the category in 2009 which meant that the list was no longer up-to-date.
Step forward Michael Brewer of Clerestorey who has compiled a more comprehensive directory of the leading tools to support his work in advising clients on monitoring their brands in social media.
1. Competitive landscape for reputation management tools
Reputation management tools have been categorised in different ways, for example
- Listening platforms (used by Forrester in their review of 10 tools earlier in 2009)
- Reputation or online management tools (ORM)
- Brand defence tools
- Social Media Monitoring or buzz tracking software
- Consumer Generated Media (CGM) tracking
Within these areas, Michael has defined 7 different product categories for brand reputation management and monitoring software which you can see in the 7 colour coded sections of the table.
| Category 1 - Wide scope analytical and reporting tools for all aspects of monitoring customer opinions and campaign effectiveness | ||
| Category 2 - Blog based influence assessment tools, designed to gain access to influential customers/commentators | ||
| Category 3 - PR and media management tools for reputation management and assessing opinion forming influence | ||
| Category 4 - Social media tracking and intervention including free tools | ||
| Category 5 - Fraud protection, security and threat detection | ||
| Category 6 - News media tracking | ||
| Category 7 - Social media within sales management - for identifying B2B prospects |
I have highlighted the most widely used tools in each category with an asterisk.
2. Key distinguishing features of competitors in 2009
- Scope and range of searching - number of sites, etc, real time or delayed
- Sophistication of analysis tools, especially for language analysis; statistical or semantic
- Flexibility of data presentation, quality of text/charts, dashboard fixed or user configured
- Communication tools for issuing alerts, collaborative working, via email, text, IM
- Integration with other applications, primarily web data tracking and CRM systems
- Option or requirement for ‘human intervention’ by user and/or supplier
- Charging model and implications for total cost of use
3. Upcoming competitive features in 2010 and beyond
- Capability for image tracking, video, logo, photos etc
- Integration with workflow, ERP systems, etc
- Range of report formats, styles, configured as ‘products’
- Chart and analysis integration - mapping, 3D, tag clouds, visualisation techniques, etc
- Actionability -direct intervention in dialogue, development of advertising, web campaigns, etc
4. Notes on compilation
- Twitter-only search and tracking tools have been excluded (eg Twendz, Twitratr)
- Some suppliers include agency/consulting services as standard - eg Nielsen Buzz Metrics; Cymfony; Reputrace
- Typical billing models include annual/monthly subscription, number of profiles tracked, volume of data collected, number of users
Name | Positioning | Analysis | Reporting/Products |
| Category 1 - Wide scope analytical and reporting tools for all aspects of monitoring customer opinions and campaign effectiveness | |||
| * Radian6 - in partnership with Web Trends | Social media monitoring platform for marketing, communications and customer support professionals Billing is tied to results, not the parameters used | Sentiment, engagement, reach, inbound links, vote count or comment count Post and source tags to create a “social web caller ID” system, and segment results for in-depth reporting and analysis Supports filters | Flexible dashboard and as-it-happens alerts enable monitoring of all forms of social media and related comments in real-time Results can be filtered by country, by source and by media type, within date range or for pre-set days Email, IM, communication tools WebTrends integration filters social media content with web stats like site visits, conversions, or purchases |
| Trupulse(Visible, founded 2005; strategic partnership with WPP) | Online brand management - Repair, protect and proactively promote brand or corporate reputation in search engine results | Powered by the proprietary truCAST engine - discovery, collection, processing, analysis and engagement architecture for social media content | truREPUTATION - online reputation management service truPULSE - RSS based web monitoring truINSIGHT truVOICE - allows participation with consumers truSEARCH - SEO tool |
| * Scout Labs | Relatively low cost ’self service product’ Costs range from $100 to $750 a month (Feb. 2009) depending upon how many platforms, or “workspaces,” and how many concurrent text searches clients need, there is no limit on nos users per workspace | Proprietary tools | Create graphs, forward, bookmark, initiate discussions, download graph data or copy graphs The dashboard offers real-time metrics for buzz volume, customer sentiment, and competitive share of voice across the web Agencies can ‘white label’ the reports |
| SEER (VML, part of WPP group) | Defines a brand ‘ecosystem’ | System built on 1) a focused crawler; 2) custom dictionaries and parsing; 3) a web-based control panel; 4) a three-dimensional visualization tool Constantly updated | Builds a model over time of the patterns of communication within the target audience Every relationship is mapped out three-dimensionally, with ‘hot spots’ and tag clouds to identify areas of interest |
| * Nielsen Buzz Metrics | Real time market intelligence and brand metrics, with expert input and support | Text-mining, analytic technologies and expert analysts | 30 report formats Customisable dashboard Threat Tracker alerts by email Brand Tracking, Audit and Scorecard reports for regular information Brand Association maps |
| Feedback Ferret | Voice of Customer Platform to gather, analyse and report on customer feedback | Contextual analysis engine extracts topics, themes and sentiment from unstructured feedback; can build in customer data files | Interactive dashboards supplied; capability to share across organisation |
| Interwoven(acquired by Autonomy 2009) | Interwoven web content management uses Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) to provide a powerful solution for profiting from social media | Uses Meaning Based Computing technology; IDOL gives clustering, pattern matching techniques, and probabilistic modeling | Dashboard data delivered within the content management system TeamSite, LiveSite, and Optimost automatically deliver dynamic, targeted, and optimized content and offers to consumers based on social media sentiment and emerging trends |
| Category 2 - Blog based influence assessment tools, designed to gain access to influential customers/commentators | |||
| Nielsen BlogPulse | Blog tracking and management for individuals and bloggers as well as corporates | Based on machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques Search by link (URL), keyword, phrase, boolean query, and date range | “Performs a unique kind of text mining on blog data to help reveal topics and themes within blog entries every day” Statistical reports, produced daily Trend analysis and charting Blogger profiling Conversation tracker |
| * Market Sentinel | A range of tools for sentiment monitoring, identifying key influencers and campaign buzz tracking. | Based on machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques Search by link (URL), keyword, phrase, boolean query, and date range | “Performs a unique kind of text mining on blog data to help reveal topics and themes within blog entries every day” Statistical reports, produced daily Trend analysis and charting Blogger profiling Conversation tracker |
| Buzz Logic | Blog based media agency - tracking influential conversations on the web and aligning ad campaigns Costed on monthly subscriptions | Algorithms calculate the expertise and credibility of conversational media, and map the social graphs emerging around each site’s content Based on analysis of: -traffic and number of inbound links -contextual relevance to a customer’s specified area of concern, such as key words. -frequency of content publication on such topics -the traffic it sends back to the marketer | ?? |
| Category 3 - PR and media management tools for reputation management and assessing opinion forming influence | |||
| * Cymfony(acquired by TNS Media Group in 2007) | PR management tool with customer service and marketing applications, especially crisis management | Powered by Cymfony’s InfoXtract(TM) technology, an information extraction and analysis engine used by US government and intelligence agencies Proprietary Natural Language Processing engine automatically identifies, classifies, quantifies and benchmarks important people, places, companies, concepts, relationships, and events in documents from both traditional and social media. Based on detailed grammatical analysis of the text | Orchestra - a model centred on metric views, reports, and clippings. With interface tools to help users build custom views, create and share reports and structure complex queries to sort though massive amounts of data Cymfony’s Professional Services team delivers customized reporting services, specializing in integrated media measurement programs with corporate six sigma initiatives |
| Marchex Reputation Management (in development) | Customer insight tool for SMEs | Standard charts on positive, neutral or negative reviews | Checks business listings Identifies keywords for differentiation Competitor comparison Capability to share positive news and reviews with customers and employees through email, Twitter, Facebook, Digg or other sources |
| Reputica | Reputation management and recruitment support Claims to be able to predict where stories will go as well as track where they came from | Powered by iFeed, a discovery and aggregation engine for social media Self-learning capability Inbuilt ranking and scoring system with sentiment analysis | Dashboard capability for online reputation monitoring Search related tool for recruiters |
| Jodange | Opinion based reputation management Targets publishers of online content | Uses linguistic analysis to extract opinion data from documents and identify the opinion holder and topic each opinion expression Ignores factual statements to focus on opinions and score sentiments | Defines the relationship between Opinion Holder, Opinion, and Topic Capability to correlate opinions to outcomes over time |
| Category 4 - Social media tracking and intervention including free tools | |||
| Converseon | Social media agency with proprietary tool for listening | Advanced proprietary natural language processing and related technologies plus human interaction from the set-up phase through to report delivery and engagement | Conversation MinerTM Conversation Manager Conversation Monitor SERM Analyzer |
| * Who’s Talkin | Free tool for individuals or organisations wanting to monitor their own or competitors presence in social media conversations | Search and sorting algorithms | Search strings |
| * Social Mention | Free social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content | Analysis based on:Strength is phrase mentions within the last 24 hours divided by total possible mentions. Sentiment ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative. Passion is most frequently used keywords and number of times mentioned. Number of mentions by sentiment. Reach the number of unique authors referencing your brand divided by the total number of mentions | Search strings Delivers daily social media alerts |
| * Trackur | Tracks sentiments and trends in social media mentions with alerts via email and RSS | Boolean keyword based query with option to exclude some sites | |
| * Viralheat | Viralheat aims to be a one stop shop for understanding social media Effectively a search engine Monthly subscription (10 profiles for $10 and 50 profiles for $40) | User generated profiles. Operate on a proprietary, custom-built cloud host. Includes Compete and Quantcast numbers. | Generates dashboard charts Insights delivered in real time Exports to Excel or pdf Daily email alerts can be shared |
| NetBase Consumer Insights | Market and consumer insights in real-time to identify actionable consumer opinions | Content Intelligence is able to read every sentence of every document, linguistically understand the sentences, and provide market and consumer insights | |
| Category 5 - Fraud protection, security and threat detection | |||
| Envisional | Fraud and piracy protection for logos and trademarks Patented A31 visual search technology | Built in filters with user defined parameters Unique, patented search technologies alongside a team of experienced analysts “sentiment monitoring” system, using fuzzy logic and self-organising maps | ?? |
| KnowEm | Brand protection and security | Identifies users of brand names and their contact details Tracks multiple metrics to determine which networks are gaining (or losing) traction in the social media landscape | ?? |
| Reputrace(Repumetrix formerly CoreX) | ‘All purpose’ but focus on security applications | High speed reporting on latest mentions and references Reporting tool sends summaries from the site that include company logos | |
| Mark Monitor | Brand security, particularly domain monitoring | ||
| FiltrBox | News tracking system | Looks at multiple dimensions to generate a score (1-10 scale) for each article Can be user defined | Rapid alert system Email, web dashboard, and custom RSS feeds (FiltrFeedsTM) Daily briefing emails |
| Category 6 - News media tracking | |||
| Newssift | News media based search tool exclusively focused on business | Identifies the people, companies, places and connections common across all stories; scores sentiment within stories | User defined queries |
| NewsLive(ebiquity) | Completely automated digital service plus all the benefits of a traditional, tried-and-tested manual clippings agency | The Newslive editorial monitoring service 3 different scores, allocated by trained readers. Scores can be weighted according to the size of audience | An email alert is sent as soon as a relevant news story breaks; the latest headlines and content transcripts are included by a team of specialist news readers and précis writers working 24/7 Users can track the scores |
| Category 7 - Social media within sales management - for identifying B2B prospects | |||
| Inside View | Identifies B2B sales companies prospects from intelligence gained from social media and traditional editorial sources | Continuously aggregates and analyzes personal, executive, and corporate information | Delivers contact lists, exports leads, manages watch lists, etc |
Please add your experiences or comments on other social media monitoring software. Thank you!
Dave Chaffey and Michael Brewer
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Filtrbox Community Manager & Chief Listener
@MichaelFraietta
@MATTERmidia
@TomMessett6c
@RepuMetrix
Is there a reason that you haven’t included Alterian SM2 (was Techrigy SM2)?
I believe that it fits in Category 1. It has the most comprehensive charting & analytical abilities on the market. It also has automated sentiment with a customizable dictionary, workflow and many other aspects (geomapping, etc).
Director of Community Strategy, Alterian
@cbensen
Great starting point to evaluate these tools.
DD
It also includes text analytics (sentiment analysis, reputation/perception analysis).
White papers are available at http://www.digimind.com
Primarily falls into category 2, 3, 6, and 7.
A recent AML/KYC module in Digimind would fall into category 5 (Fraud intel).
Hope this helps.
Chris.
That’s understandable. There are over 100 tools and cover a diverse spectrum of functionality.
Connie
You can also take a look at the reputation market map with a lot of social media monitoring solutions :
http://www.demainlaveille.fr/2009/11/16/e-reputation-market-map-v2-marche-de-la-e-reputation-v2/
Great post and a great list, I think you might want to also consider Moreover’s Newsdesk tool for a complete news and social media monitoring solution. Newsdesk is a versatile and powerful solution that offers instant access to breaking news and views, along with various filters and analytics to measure and compare content all through a single service.
Thanks
Zak
@moreovertech
Jon Moody
jon.moody@asomo.net
Twitter: @jonnybgood68