Brand Monitoring on
Twi.er
Markus Pohl
Twi.woch, 7 Oct. 2009

ABOUT

Goal
My goal was to find good brand monitoring tools ...
... for Twi.er
... for free
Note:
There are A LOT more tools available for Twi.er monitoIng as well as for
social media monitoring.
New tools popping up every day.

ExpectaIons & Wishes
• VisualizaIon of trend lines
• Benchmark
• Web based (SaaS)
• Find „hubs“ and „evangelists“
• Make relevant tweets visible
• SenIment :) :(
• Save search queries for later searches

BRAND MONITORING METHODS

Track, monitor or measure?
• Track
• Monitor
• Measure

How to monitor?
• On a regular base (one Ime per week is
sufficient).
• Be.er track less and o[en than extensive and
irregular.
• Make brand monitoring part of your business
rouInes. (e.g. add Twi.er monitoring RSS‐
feeds to your personalized starIng page).

What to monitor?
• Which parameters should you choose to track or
measure your brand?
• There are different models for brand monitoring/
measuring.
Indicators for beginners (monitoring)
Company name, company URL, Key employees, Product
names, Product URLs, important industry “hang outs”,
compeItors
Indicators for advanced learners (measuring)
# of menIons, # of re‐tweets, senIment towards brand,
hubs & evangelists.

Search terms
For some brands it is very hard to find good
search terms (try to be „MECE“)

TOOLS

Tested tools
Twi3er Search Trend Charts & Visualiza?on Tools
Twi.er Advanced Search twi.er‐trends
tweetvolume
Single Search Terms bzzscapes
Topsy Socialseek
Oneriot TrendisIc
Tinker Ubervu
Scoopler Twends
Collecta
Crowdeye
SocialmenIon Other
Tweetbeep
Mul?ple Search Terms Wha.hetrend
Moni.er
Twee.abs
Filtrbox
sm2.techrigy

Twitter Search

twi.er search
Easy to use
A lot of opIons (locaIon
based, person‐related,
boolean operators, date‐
specific, …)
RSS‐subscripIon for query
Shows trending topics
Basic, easy, good for a start

Single Search Term

ABOUT
topsy
Basic funcIons: lists tweets & posts for the search term
Searches mulIple Social Networks
Trending topics

oneriot
Basic tool
Searches through mulIple social networks (unfortunately
you cannot switch on/off parIcular networks)
Offers tweets by category (Music, celebriIes, ...)

Inker
Basic: shows tweets containing
the query
Crowded site, not very easy to
use (adverIsements,
featured events, ...)
Good idea: people create
topics („events“) they twi.er
about.
Shows trending topics
Sign up and safe queries
Widget for toolbar
I didn‘t like it.

scoopler
Very basic: shows search term & trending topics
Crawls mulIple social networks
Nice simple interface (videos, links (ads!?) and pictures
Simple, easy, nice to handle

collecta
Easy to handle (searches blogs, comments, micromessages, photos &
videos)
Possibility to opt‐in/out with your queries within search for photos,
videos, comments, microblogs, ....
Nice UI
nice & easy

crowdeye
Powerful. Shows popular links, tweets, related hastags and trend
lines (up to 3 days).
Sorts tweets according to crowdeye‘s own relevance/ranking
algorithm
Measures the relevance of a person
google ads nicely integrated

socialmenIon
Very interesIng staIsIcal
informaIon (senIment, top
keywords, top users, top
hashtags, PostRank)
Crawls mulIple social networks
(blogs, bookmarks,
comments, ...)
Shows trending topics
RSS‐feed & email alert
Alert funcIon
wow!

Multiple Search Term

moni.er
Powerful: lots of features (RSS feeds for searches,
widget for website, help)
Shows trending topics
Works slowly
Unlimited (?) # of search terms

twee.abs
Very similar to moni.er
Displays exactly the same results
Shows trending topics
… but much faster than moni3er!

filtrbox
Good usability
Very powerful: search Twi.er or other networks, measures importance of
tweet, sort by importance, alert funcIon, import google alerts, add RSS
sources, block domains, tag cloud/serach term, different view opIons...
You can also create folders for mulIple queries
Freemium model ‐ RegistraIon reqired
Nice gimmick: „check you influence“
Powerful! Recommendable!

sm2.techrigy
Sign‐in necessary
Seems very powerful. A lot
of opIons but a bit
complicated.
IniIal search needs hours
or days!
I guess it is a good tool but
I was not able to use it.
(My iniIal search lasted
for more than 10 hours).

Trend Charts & Visualization Tools

twi.er‐trends
Full of ads
Does not find as many tweets as other tools! (=> Does not works with
small brands).
Shows “trend se.ers” (persons who tweeted first about …)
Works slowly
Nice graphs but not very helpful

tweetvolume
Nice and easy visualizaIon
tool
Shows bar charts for up to
5 search terms
Don‘t tell you for which
Ime period!?

bzzscapes
Works different that the other tools: you become a fan of a brand
(or create a new one). Works like a forum with forum tread.
Content is added to thread/brand by user.
Only works for very big brands.
Extraordinary interac?ve visualiza?on

socialseek
InstallaIon required
Easy to handle.
Searches mulIple social networks (nice: shows thumbnails for picture
queries)
Very cool feature: shows mulIple trend lines (for blogs, twi.er, ...)
Nice visualisa?on possibili?es (line, cloud)

trendisIc
Great graphs
Shows the last 180 days (unfortunately only for a few search terms)
Breakdowns by the hour
Counts % of total (for popular terms) or total # (for unpopular terms)
Nice archive of trending topics
I like it!

uberVU
Very easy UI
Shows trend lines (including events related to the brand)
Searches mulIple networks
Powerful: Widget for blog, browser, bookmarking, RSS‐feed for query,
top‐“stories“ (answers) to a query
„follow conversaIon“ funcIon
Brilliant! Very powerful and easy to use! Must have!

twends
Didn’t work, but nice name!

Other

tweetbeep
It is “google alerts on Twi.er”
with hourly updates
Sign‐in necessary
Does exactly what twi.er
search can do (and even
looks the same)
Freemium model (10 alerts for
free)*
Ads in emails are a bit annoying
Not really „real ?me search“

wha.hetrend
Explains WHY a topic is trending!
ExplanaIons based on crowdsourcing model
Good idea but does not work very reliable. (see
above)

LEARNINGS &
CONTACT

Learnings
• I did not find on single tool to fulfil all my
needs.
• But two or three tools are totally sufficient.
• I can recommend: SocialmenIon, Filtrbox,
UberVU, trendisIc
• Before you start: Have a strategy/ have a goal.
(esp. if your brand is not big).

Thank you!
Markus Pohl
Twi.er: @m_pohl
Xing: www.xing.com/profile/Markus_Pohl7
Linkedin: linkedin.com/pub/markus‐pohl/3/638/a47
Facebook: facebook.com/markus.pohl
www.buerofuersinnfragen.de