This document summarizes a webinar on assessing major social media monitoring tools. It discusses the differences between social media management and monitoring tools, key considerations for monitoring tools, and provides a review of the top 10 monitoring tools, including Sysomos, Radian 6, Alterian SM2, and free monitoring options. The summary focuses on the challenges of using sentiment analysis and turning monitoring data into useful insights.

1. Social Business Intelligence
Assessing the Major SMM Tools

2. Webinar Series
Date Title
Completed Social Business Intelligence – An Introduction
Completed Social Business Intelligence – Assessing your
Social Strategy
Completed Social Business Intelligence – Assessing your
Competition
Completed Social Business Intelligence – Monitoring to
Engagement
TODAY Social Business Intelligence – Assessing the
Major SMM Tools

3. “Big data has the potential to empower true listening
and responding to the needs of our customers in real
time.
It will increasingly empower a contextual conversation
that creates the type of meaningful dialog that makes
social the tested way to build long-term, meaningful
connections with your target audience.”
Andrew Patterson

4. Agenda
 Social Media Management Tools
 Management vs. Monitoring
 Key Feature Sets of Monitoring Tools
 Ten Key Monitoring Tools – Review
 Free Monitoring Tools
 More Resources

5. Social Media Management Tools
 A Social Media Management System (SMMS) is a
software tool that uses business rules and approved
employees and partners to manage multiple social
media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and
YouTube
 This system contains features such as governance,
workflow, intelligence, and integration capabilities across
the enterprise
Altimeter Group

6. Social Media Management Use Cases

7. Social Media Management Use Cases

8. Social Media Management Tools

9. Social Media Monitoring Tools
 Social Media Monitoring is the systematic observation
and analysis of social media conversations and dialogue
in discussion forums, blogs, microblogs, video and
images, social communities such as Facebook, and
online news sources.
 It uses search engine technology to ‘listen’ for specific
keywords or phrases as defined by your organization

10. Management versus Monitoring
 Many monitoring tools contain elements of management
tools
 It is very likely you will need both types of tools
 We believe that over time these tool sets and categories
will merge
 We believe that monitoring tools will override as they
provide the basis of social business intelligence
(insight)

11. Key Considerations for Monitoring Tools
 Ease of set up – wizards and guides
 Ease of use – dashboards, drilldowns, filters
 Responsiveness to change (can I re-filter?)
 Coverage
– Media
– Geography
– Language (and translation)
 Sentiment analysis – at what level
 Location – how is it determined?
 How is it filtered?
 Spam filters?

12. Key Considerations for Monitoring Tools
 Volume of data E.g. all tweets or selection?
 Demographics What type and at what level?
 Data latency How real time is it?
 Text analytics What type, what levels?
 Collection and storage What is the underlying
architecture? What if I want history?
 Engagement Moderation, case creation, dialogue,
scheduling
 Workflow Automated, team, customer

13. Other Points to Consider
 Help, support and documentation
 CRM integration
 APIs – plug ins
 Number of topics
• How much does my money buy?
 User defined dashboards
 Research capability
• What level of historical data is available when I start?
 Licensing model and terms
• Fixed, variable, different versions

14. Ten Key Monitoring Tools
 Sysomos
 Radian 6
 Alterian SM2
 PeopleBrowsr
 Brandwatch
 Visible Technologies
 Argyle Social
 Neilson Buzzmetrics
 Lithium Scout Labs
 Attensity 360
There are hundreds of monitoring tools – these are our Top 10.
Disclosure – we use Sysomos and Radian 6 for our clients.

15. Sysomos
 Excellent media and location
coverage including traditional
news
 Both research (MAP) and
monitoring (Heartbeat) capability
 Strong text analytics
 Influencer analysis
 Sentiment analysis
 Simple ability to re filter data
 Includes moderation and
engagement for Facebook and
Twitter
 Workflow and integration APIs
 Online translation of foreign
language posts
 Pricing is fixed

16. Radian 6
 Best user defined dashboards
and widgets
 Complicated to set up
 Great drilldown capability
 Excellent media and location
coverage
 Strong text analytics
 Multi language but no on-the-
go translation
 Strong workflow and
engagement features
 Strong integration with sales
force, CRM and improving all
the time
 Flash based technology
 Cost is results dependent and
will grow over time

17. Alterian SM2
 Excellent Share of Voice analysis
 Strong sentiment analysis with
‘tone’ as well as ‘emotion’ but
done by word
 Not as strong in media and
geography coverage as Radian 6
or Sysomos but you can create
key word searches in 60
languages
 Easy to use
 Has historic data warehouse
 No research tool
 Have web analytics, email
marketing and web content
management tools – need this to
get any engagement features
 Competitive pricing though base
package is limited to 10,000
conversations

18. People Browsr
 Audience feature
 ‘Community’ influencers
search for engagement
 Easy to use and set up
 Build dashboards on-the-
go
 Competitive pricing
 Sentiment analysis
 2-3 years of data
 Includes new ‘Kred’
service
 Strong reporting
capability
 Competitive licensing

19. Brandwatch
 Easy to use and set up
 Moderate data collection
capability
 Good media coverage
 Sentiment analysis not a
strength
 Responsive to new data
 Moderate demographics
capability
 Competitive licensing costs;
UK based
 17 languages, no translation
 Few engagement features
 Built-in Flash technology
 6 month rolling data

20. Visible Technologies
 Ad hoc searching is strong
 Limitless search allowance
 Good dashboards
 Built-in Flash technology
 Pricing based on rolling
data range
 No traditional news
coverage
 Additional languages at a
fee
 Workflow and engagement
not a strength

21. Argyle Social
 Strong focus as a social marketing platform with social ROI and
marketing metrics
 A combination of monitoring and management – has posting features
 Has workflow and engagement capability
 More about campaign measurement and monitoring than general social
media monitoring
 Most suitable if you are really only interested in monitoring your
marketing campaigns

22. Neilson Buzzmetrics
 Very comprehensive tools
 Strong reporting capabilities
 Can be difficult to set up
without assistance
 Strong drilldown capability
 Sentiment moderation
performed offshore
 Some delay in data capture
 A joint offering with
McKinsey so pricing and
service aimed at multi
nationals
 Engagement and workflow is
strong
 Only moderate language
capability

23. Ten Free Monitoring Tools
 Google Alerts
 Technorati Search
 Facebook Insights
 Addict–o–matic
 Google Reader feeds
 Google Insights
 Socialmention
 Twitalyzer
 Google Analytics
 Alexia

24. Summary
 Tools are the easy part
 Sentiment is never correct
 There is a lot of effort to turn monitoring to insight
 Carefully consider the underlying premise:
• Demographics not always complete
• Only 50% of people declare their location (unknown country filter is key)
• Using IP or URL data for location is not accurate
• Other missing data from profiles
 Focus on influencers, rather than volume.

25. Suggested Further Reading
 http://www.sysomos.com/
 http://www.radian6.com/
 http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/ - Occam’s Razor
 http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/enterprise/2011/08/harnessin
g_social_business_int.php

26. Thank You
Contact Us
Address: iGo2 Group Pty Ltd
153 Walker Street, Level 8
North Sydney 2060
Australia
Email: contact@iGo2Group.com
Phone: +61 2 9954 0070
Website: www.iGo2group.com