social media listening tool a comparative study (1)

7/27/2019 Social Media Listening Tool a Comparative Study (1)

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SOCIAL MEDIA

INTELLIGENCE

Listening and WebAnalytics Tool A

Comparative Study

Kumar MallampalliHead Emerging Solutions and ITServices

Shamer MPractice Leader Digital Marketing andUXM Solutions


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Defiance Technologies limited

Social Media Intelligence Listening and Web Analytics Tool A Comparative Study

Defiance Technologies Limited Proprietary and Confidential Page1of 22

Table of Contents

1 Background.................................................................................................................................................. 22 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 33 Market Trends.............................................................................................................................................. 44 Considerations for Choosing a Social Media Listening Platform ................................................................ 55 Paid versus Open-Source ........................................................................................................................... 76 Evaluation of Social Media Listening and Analytic Tools ............................................................................ 8

6.1 Social Media Listening and Analytic Tools ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 86.1.1RADIAN6..................................................................................................................................................... 86.1.2ALTERIAN SM2.......................................................................................................................................... 96.1.3CONverseon............................................................................................................................................. 10

6.2 Product Feature Comparison -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 117 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 178 Annexure 1: Open Source Listening Tools and Their applications ........................................................... 189 Reference .................................................................................................................................................. 21


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1 Background

Global organisations are looking to scale up their online presence and e-commerce activities. Organizationsare looking to engage with their customers in the online space more actively. They want to listen to what

customers have to say online, going beyond brand interest. There are various tools available in the market

that can help organisations engage with their customers online in a more active manner. The aim of this white

paper is to evaluate leading web analytical and listening tools and suggest the most feasible and holistic

solution to address these needs.


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2 Introduction

Companies of every kind are beginning to focus more on consumers and have started engaging with them onFacebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms. But the successful businesses, the ones that

want to really make their social media efforts count, are going beyond just gaining simple visibility.

Opinions and recommendations, discussions and debates, rumours and rants... consumers have taken the

conversations about brands online. Consumer Generated Media (CGM) - content created by consumers on

blogs, online discussion boards and forums and other social media platforms is one of the fastest growing

online segments today. Effectively measuring, interpreting and acting on CGM offers key competitive

advantages for todays consumer-centred brands.

This vast, unstructured, unprompted online conversation is a powerfully rich source of meaningful insights,

intelligence and information that can provide sustainable competitive advantage for organisations.

Social media presents businesses with vast amounts of customer information, as well as a lot of irrelevant

discussion. But, by harnessing the right social technologies, mining for insights and taking informed marketing

decisions, brands have the opportunity to make the most of social media.


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3 Market Trends

Forrester discussed the Listening Tools Market in its Listening Landscape 2010. Forrester detailed that,businesses had to move to the next big process in Social Media Listening in order to sustain the customer

confidence and stay in the ever-growing critique of social media channel. Businesses cannot remain stuck to

traditional means of collecting data from social media, which has become a quite daunting task with ever

increasing data and ever-increasing consumer engagement with social media. Businesses should try to

evolve or move into next generation listening platform which have much more sophisticated offerings.

Hence, social media listening tools have evolved from just collecting data to Social Intelligence.

Collection of dataAnalysisSocial CRMSocial Intelligence

From 2010 to 2011, social media in the enterprise has reached a tipping point. For many brands, social engagement is no

longer seen as a set of small experiments on the fringe of the organization. Instead, social media has become a core

component of the business strategy. As such, we are witnessing a rapid evolution from ad-hoc and sponsored exploration,

to a desire for enterprise enablement, where social media and social intelligence become competitive advantages that

enable critical business performance.

For organizations that are looking to participate in this evolution, four important areas must be addressed:

Determining how and where listening can significantly impact business outcomes and objectives

Understanding how to manage vast amounts of data, find meaningful insights and support business processes

and use-cases - for today and tomorrow

Determining what should be automated and the role that people need to play; and determining the balance of

internal versus external resources and capabilities

Creating frameworks to infuse social intelligence into the far reaches of the organization and ensuring timely

action with a systematic, best-practice approach that includes performance measurement based on impact to the

business


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4 Considerations for Choosing a Social Media Listening

PlatformThe listening platform market is still in its infancy. Platforms come in all shapes and sizes, rolling out new

features and tools that enable customers to turn social media data into actionable insight. There is a growing

number of listening platforms devoted to social media everything from highly customized services that are

managed for businesses, to free tools businesses can manage themselves. Between the myriad of platforms

and the accompanying hype, it becomes difficult to figure out the best solution to meet ones needs.

So here are some things you need to consider when choosing a listening platform:

What are the goals of the listening platform?

Since listening platforms have many uses, one must match ones objectives to a platforms strengths. For

example, if ones focus is on monitoring mentions or closely monitoring leads, one should seek out platforms

that are known for this type of analysis. On the other hand, if one seeks alternatives to traditional market

research, then one needs a platform that is well-known for its sentiment-capture and community analysis

capabilities.

Which media sources are relevant to your goals?

All listening platforms collect data from numerous online sources - news sites, blogs, and other websites.

While some specialize in social media sources like Twitter, review sites, and even communities; others have

the ability to cover offline media such as print, television, and radio. If you are focused on market research, ormessaging effectiveness, then you should probably work with a platform that tracks social media and user-

generated sources. But for true 360-degree brand tracking, you may require a platform that also integrates

offline sources such as the traditional press.

What technology will you need to support your goals?

If you are focused on crisis-management, you need a solution built on continuous data capture, but if you are

seeking more episodic or campaign analysis, you can settle for a platform that collects data at scheduled

intervals. If you are handling multi-national brands, you may also want to evaluate each technology based on

its ability to support multiple languages.

How much time and money can you commit to the listening platform?

The amount of time one needs to commit to listening depends largely on the output - dashboards, reports, and

digests from the listening platforms. For example, dashboards require a good deal of time to setup,

depending on the platform chosen, but provide customized data on command; reports save time. However,

they still necessitate that one (or ones department) spend time interpreting the reports and defining a follow-

up strategy.

How prepared is one to use a listening platform?

Choosing a listening platform is only the first step - listening without converting the unstructured information to

meaningful data and determining the action to be taken, is a waste of time, effort, and money. You need to


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give this last point some extra consideration and be sure to build a process that responds to all the

opportunities your listening platform identifies.

Key Features and Factors Impacting Selection Process of the Tool


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5 Paid versus Open-Source

Now that you have identified what kind of listening and analytic tool your organization needs, you can choosebetween Paid and Open Source Platforms. However, here are some points to consider:

PAID TOOLS OPEN SOURCE TOOLS

One point for entire Social Media

MonitoringDifferent tools for different purposes

Only one accounts login credentials to

remember

Many credentials for various accounts on different siteshave to be remembered and maintained

Many team members can be provided

accessOnly one person at a time for one access

Helps centralizing social media activity on alarge scale

Only meant for small scale social media managementand also not centralized

Reports and analytics centralized; savestime and cost

No centralized reports, needs to be compiled andcollated separately; may also require humaninterception; slows process and may increase cost

Can be extended to CRM as SCRM

No extension to automated CRMThird party integrations like Salesforcepossible Very few options for third-party integrations

Backing studies by Gartner and Forresteravailable

No backing studies from Gartner or Forrester; onlygeneric blogger support

Report accuracy almost guaranteedReport accuracy not guaranteed

Multi-language options also availableMulti-language options very limited or not there at all


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6 Evaluation of Social Media Listening and Analytic

ToolsWe have evaluated three leading listening tools against 39 different criteria. The tools and platforms are

examined, studied and assessed based on our experience of these tools, product websites, online secondary

research, analyst reports, and case studies.

To assess the state of the listening platform market and see how the platforms stack up against each other,

we have evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the following tools: Radian6, Alterian SM2, and

Converseon.

6.1 Social Media Listening and Analytic Tools

6.1.1 RADIAN6

Radian6 delivers one of the most popular listening platforms in the market. Radian6 has become highly visible

for its listening and monitoring capabilities. It also leads the market with its dashboard functionality - providing

more features and toolsets for a broad range of use-cases across many business lines. Radian6 has raised

the bar on features that listening platforms should provide with its recent addition of its Engagement Console -

a social media outreach tool. It is also continuing developments for data integration options into CRM and

existing analytics systems.

Advantages

Radian6 dashboard has a very intuitive layout and easy to use interface

Exhaustive Media Coverage - more than 150 million public sites and sources covered

Covers 13 international languages

Good Filtering Options - Looks at specific metrics like sentiment, engagement, reach, Twitter

followers, vote count or comment count. Allows user to filter the results by media type, geographic

region, or any of 13 international languages

Workflow and Engagement Management

Disadvantages

Radian6 has been acquired by Salesforce.com - This can limit ease of integration with other CRM,

also can influence the future strategy and direction of the product

Radian6 has limited pre-built integration with traditional CRM packages

Radian6 doesnt host a community but can partner - This can lead to functional narrowness

Customers across the board complain of data quality issues and inexperienced service team

It is not known to be very good in text analysis


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Customer Base

Radian6 currently has over 2,200 clients, including nearly half of the Fortune 100

Website:http://www.radian6.com

6.1.2 ALTERIAN SM2

Alterian acquired Techrigy and its SM2 social media monitoring solution. SM2 has been developed as a

robust standalone web-monitoring tool which is integrated with their Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform

making it now one of the most popular listening platforms dashboards in the market. SM2s real strength is its

potential, within the Alterian umbrella, by integrating the social media data it collects and analyzes, directly

into Alterians existing marketing technology platform. SM2 supports up to 60 languages in content collection

and 20 for sentiment analysis.

Advantages

Alterian SM2 provides one of the most expansive selections of multi-language coverage among social

media monitoring solutions. - Sentiment Analysis in 20 languages and Language Filtering and

Detection in 60 languages

The product is built from a marketing perspective and powered by Alterians marketing platform

Alterian SM2 provides one with a comprehensive set of user tools, reports and metrics that allows one

to track and analyze conversations across the web. SM2 reports include: Daily Volume, Share of

Voice, Compare Dates, Themes, Demographics, Author Tags, Map Overlay, View Reports, Sentiment

Reports, etc.

Alterian SM2 has an extensive Social Media Warehouse with historical data containing over 10 billion

social media mentions, blogs, tweets, posts, images and conversations

Disadvantages

Currently, integration of SM2 with CRM is still in the evolving stage and not full-fledged

A bit complicated to operate but one of the most flexible monitoring tools

Functional Narrowness: It lacks hosted community platform that possesses richer experience for

customer
http://www.radian6.com/http://www.radian6.com/http://www.radian6.com/


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engagement and analysis

Acquisition / Consolidation of the platform is possible in the near future as the market is growing byleaps and bounds

Customers

Website:http://socialmedia.alterian.com

6.1.3 CONVERSEON

Converseon's suite of social listening tools was cited as a leader in listening platforms in the emerging Social

Media Intelligence industry by Forrester. Converseon offers a leading product that does not come with

standard installation but a tailored dashboard built for enterprise installations. It offers professional services

around every step of the Social Intelligence process. Converseons model of starting with technology and

adding human analysis makes for highly effective data quality, leading custom reports, and strong

functionality.

Advantages

Converseons model of starting with technology and adding human analysis makes for highly effective

data quality, leading custom reports, and strong functionality.

Workflow provides option for getting approvals to posts/replies; giving more options to monitor ones

entire social media effort and centralize it.

Conversation Miner allows one to share social media accounts so that multiple people can use the

account without violating any social media venues terms of service. For example, Facebook does not

permit passwords for accounts to be shared with any other users. Conversation Miner allows

Facebook and Twitter accounts to be authorized by one user, for other users to post from, withoutsharing passwords.

Disadvantages

Converseon resides on the other end of the spectrum with heavy service offerings on top of moderate

technology.

There is no standard Converseon installation, the vendor builds a tailored dashboard for its enterprise

installations which essentially means that one has to be sure of what one is looking at in an SCRM

product and get a customized product accordingly.
http://socialmedia.alterian.com/http://socialmedia.alterian.com/http://socialmedia.alterian.com/


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Its customized approach also hurts its long-term strategy, as it increases the overall costs and slows

down the pace at which customers can act on social media data and focuses more on an outsourced

model of Social Intelligence.

Customers

Website:http://converseon.com

6.2 Product Feature Comparison

FEATURES RADIAN 6 ALTERIAN SM2 CONVERSEON

(CONVERSATION MINER)

Exhaustive MediaCoverage (across entireweb)

Scours more than 150million public sites andsources including blogsand comments, forums,

mainstream online newspublications, publicphotos and videos.

Covers Blogs(LiveJournal, TypePad),Message Boards andForums, Microblogs,

(Twitter, Plurk,Identi.ca), Wikis (sitesthat allow the public tomakechanges & updates),Video and Photosharing(YouTube, Flickr), SocialNetwork (XingFacebook,LinkedIn), ClassifiedSites (Craigslist),Review Sites (ePinions).

Conversation Miner has fullcoverage of blogs, messageboards, video and otherforms of social media,

including 100% of tweets asone of the original licenseesof the Twitter Firehose..

Language Coverage

Covers 13 international

languages English,French, Italian, German,Spanish, Russian,Finnish, Korean,Japanese, SimplifiedChinese, Portuguese,Dutch, and Swedish.

It provides language

coverage up to 60unique languages.

Work is also in progresswith linguist experts toincrease its automatedsentiment analysiscoverage to 20languages.

English

AlertsSet up email or IM alertseither as-it-happens or inregular intervals so oneand ones clients can stay

on top of the activity.

No Info.Users receive e-mail alertswhenever a conversation isrouted to them and can alsolog into Conversation Miner

to see the status of allengagements involving them.
http://converseon.com/http://converseon.com/http://converseon.com/


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Data Export Yes Yes Yes`

API Integration withThird Party Applications

Radian6 provides platformAPIs and Social MetricsFramework for integratingthird-party CRM

Alterians APIs forintegration are stillevolving

No

Data Archiving It can archive up to 18months

It can archive up to 24months

No

Filtering by Media Type One can also drill downinto several layers ofdetailed information onones profile results:segment them by mediatype, geographic region,language, engagementstatistics or count links,

social media metrics,percent change over timeand sources to connectthe dots around onessocial media activity.

One can filter databased on media typeslike blogs, wikis, microblogs, video-sharing,etc.

One can filter data based ontype: blogs, Twitter,Facebook, YouTube, andmore.

Filtering by Geography One can understand themagnitude of aconversation across

various regions.

One can also isolatephysical locations ofvarious conversations.

Yes

Filtering by Keywordsor Topic

One can compare tagkeywords between onesbrand and competitors.One can alsounderstand the commonthemes and magnitudeof a conversation andidentify niche keywords

for SEO.

Customer Service teams canmonitor negative sentimentaround critical keywords andreach out to disgruntledclients to turn their opinionsaround.

Filtering based onTimelines

Define time periodsincluding archivedhistory and filter data.

Yes

Filtering byDemographics

Segment data bypopularity, gender andage of author.

Yes

Automated SentimentAnalysis

Get a first glancewhether chatter aboutones topic is positive,negative, or neutral withautomated sentimentanalysis.

Sentiment Analysis in 20languages. Alterian SM2utilizes a proprietary setof technologies includingword parsing, weighting,proximity and Natural

Language Processing toenable the mostaccurate andcustomizable sentimentanalysis.

Conversation Miner employstext analytics, machinelearning, and even humananalysts to provide sentimentanalysis

Sentiment AnalysisInvolving HumanExpertise

It uses dashboardwidgets to analyze macrotrends and understandsentiment changes overtime.

One can manually adjustsentiment results to fine

tune them to onescriteria.

One can customizesentiment specific toindustry or brand.

It does not use a completelyalgorithmic approach thatcan give wrong answers.

Instead, gives a solution thatlets computers do what theydo best and counts onpeople for the rest.


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Influencer Profiling andAnalysis

One can look specificallyat influencer data tounderstand whos gotclout in respective

industry and what theyresaying.

One can also viewinfluencer data specific tokey media typesTwitter, Blogs, Video,Photos, MainstreamNews, and Forums.

One can find who hasgot how much influencein the social media andplan how one can

convey ones messageto ones target audiencein a positive way throughthem.

Yes

Viral Content Trackingand Analysis

One can gain access tovaluable meaning behindones social traffic, suchas in-depth sentiment,demographics, likes anddislikes and more;quickly and easily.

One can also understandthe context and contentof posts that are drivingthe website actions andresults you want.

Reviewing of contenttype share acrossmultiple channels ispossible with thisproduct.

One can also comparethe share of discussionsacross several brands tounderstand what'sdriving the conversation.

Yes

Trend Analysis Yes It helps track how topicstrend over time incomparison.

Conversation Miner can helpone track changes insentiment, conversation

volume, brand fans, visits toones website, and even webconversions.

Topic and ThemeAnalysis

Use post and sourcetags to create a Socialweb caller ID systemand segment results forin-depth reporting andanalysis.

It helps one discoverissues being discussedabout ones brand,competitors or industryand also understand aspecific audience'sunique interest. One canalso ensure keywordsare accurately utilizedwithin search setup.

Yes

Word/Tag Cloud The Context anddiscussion around onesbrand mentions caninform ones SEO effortsby reflecting thelanguage yourcommunity uses.

It lets one compare tagkeywords between onesbrand and competitors.

Understand the commonthemes and magnitudeof a conversation.Identify niche keywordsfor SEO.

No information available.

Competitive Analysis Yes One can analyze brandconversations againstcompetitors and viewside-by-side

comparisons, rankagainst competitive

Social media accounts canbe used to respond to theconversation and their impactcan be measured and

compared to competitoraccounts.


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offerings and benchmarkagainst industrystandards.

Campaign Managementand Measurement

No information available Yes, but through theirproduct Social MediaPublisher.

No information available.

Campaign ROICalculation

No information available. Yes, but through theirproduct Social MediaPublisher.

Yes

Customizable Dashboard Dashboards can beconfigured by choosingwidgets from more than40 pre-configuredwidgets in the gallery.

One can also copy onesdashboard to onesteammates orsupervisors and showthem what one is hearingand seeing, and howones activities areimpacting results.

Multiple dashboards canalso be built and savedto segment and easilyview data. Dashboards,Widgets or Engagement

Reports can also bedownloaded or emailedto suit needs.

Maybe Partially Yes

Workflow Management One can use workflowmanagement in the Riverof News, or in theirEngagement Console toscale listening acrossones organization.

One can also use it toassign posts to teammembers, add internal

notes, flag priority,categorize and classifyposts and set up an online caller ID systemwith post and sourcetags, schedule alerts,and report onengagement activity rightfrom the dashboard.

Yes, but through theirproduct Social MediaPublisher. It has aninteractive workflowprocess for easyassignment,prioritization, responseand reviews.

One can engage

through individualizedaccounts forpersonalization.

Audit of trails ofinteractions, responsesand notes of specificposts are also possible.

Conversation Miner providesadvanced workflow featuresto help turn social listeninginto engagement and action.

Conversation Minerworkflows can be very simpleor quite intricate, dependingon your requirements,supporting up to eight

separate steps for anapproval process.

Advanced Roles andPermissions for multipleUsers

Yes Yes, but only theirproduct Social MediaPublisher.

Yes. For e.g.: Administratorscan see the engagements forall users within their clientgroup.

Client RelationshipManagement (CRM)

One can also align socialmedia with ones sales,

Yes, kind of, throughtheir product Social

No information available


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account and websiteefforts with just a fewclicks.

One can not only learnwhich sites sent peopleto ones business, butalso what they werereading and discussingbefore they clicked, andwhether or not it madethem take action whenthey got there.

Media Publisher.

Conversation Tracking Yes It helps one to drill intothe coverage of specificposts or comments.

Yes. Conversation Minerhelps one to trackconversation real-time, rightfrom where it started so thatone and ones team arearmed with the rightinformation to tackle everysituation.

Fan/Follower tracking Yes Not directly, but, throughtheir Social MediaPublisher, they can helptrack a conversation witha customer.

Yes

Advanced Publishingand EngagementOptions

One can also assign androute posts across theenterprise and track

engagement andresponse via theRadian6 Engagementconsole.

Yes, but through theirproduct Social MediaPublisher.

It helps monitor andactively engage in socialmedia conversationsdirectly from theplatform.

The best social mediasuccess stories involvecompany personnel reaching

out to their fans to amplifytheir impact and to theirdetractors to turn themaround.

Conversation Miner helpsone become such a successstory.

Once a response has beenapproved, users can postthese responses to Twitter,Facebook and LinkedIn

without ever leaving theConversation Miner tool,using its integratedpublishing capability.

Usable on any Browsers,Mobile, PC

Yes. For mobiles, it iscurrently usable only on

Apple iPhone.

No information available It is available on MicrosoftInternet Explorer 7 or higher,Mozilla Firefox 3.1 or higher,

Apple Safari 4 or higher,Google Chrome 10 or higher.

User-friendly Interface Yes Average Average; complicated thanthe other two platformscompared here.

Enterprise Level

Scalability

Yes No Info Conversation Miner provides

scalable accountmanagement that allows one


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to share social mediaaccounts so that multiplepeople can use the accountwithout violating any social

media venues terms ofservice.

Sample Client List GE, 3M, Microban, UPS,Dell, Kodak, Logitech,Intuit, SallieMae, LorealCanada, Bissell, Pepsi,

AutoNation, Crocs,Canadian Tire, AmericanRed Cross, Mayo Clinic,ComCast.

Microsoft, PayPal, Sage,Skype, Xerox; and,

Abraham Harrison,Bader Rutter, FlintCommunications,Yomego, DigitalVoodoo, MD AndersonCancer Center, Pursuit,Global Crossing,YouCast, Latin List,YouDB, Bullseye, RedBricks Media use

Alterian SM2 for theirclients which collectivelyinclude Kimberly ClarkHealthCare, LoweWorldwide, SharpElectronics, GEHealthcare,Pfizer, 3M, SubWay,MTV, Durex, BBC,Ladbrokes, etc.

Amway, Lion Brand Yarn,Graco, Dow, etc.


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7 Conclusion

Social media listening is a rapidly growing domain and tools in the market are still maturing day by day.Hence, a organisation should define an approach to transform the unstructured data, flooded from social

media, into meaningful data that can be analysed by the business and then, respond to the social data. An

organization should also develop a framework that can track social media. It should also identify who its true

brand advocates are; and, should learn about them beyond their interest in their brand. Deeper analysis can

lead to better insights about the identity of these brand advocates, their interests and needs.

Our evaluation of the three popular social media monitoring tools reveals that Radian 6 is the most popular

one with intuitive layout and ease to use, Alterian looks very promising for global brands with its multilingual

capability of handling 60 languages and sentiment analysis capability in 20 languages, while Converseons

Conversation Miner platform is not as evolved as the other two platforms.

We also analysed another platform from Webtrends called Social Measurement. Being powered by Radian6,

it also brings to the table, similar social media listening and analytic capabilities as Radian6, but not

exhaustive as Radian6 in terms of functionality. However, it has added extra analytic capabilities by

integrating with the Webtrends Analytic. This provides deep-dive analytics on web activities and very useful in

studying customer behaviour patterns in ecommerce websites.

Radian6 and Alterians SM2 both sell their systems based on the quantity of results. For $600 a month, one

can have unlimited search terms and an unlimited number of users to examine 10,000 results Radian6

charges $500 a month to examine 10,000 net new results, but only one user get access (it costs an extra

$100 per user that you add). So, you will have to likely share a single Radian6 login among many members of

your team and take turns using it. Both Radian6 and Alterians SM2 are offered on SaaS model.

The customization and deployment of the both the tools are quick and calibrated over a period of time.

Radian6 provides platform APIs and Social Metrics Framework for integrating third-party CRM. With

Radian6s acquisition by Salesforce.com, its integration with other CRMs can be limited and also influence the

future strategy and direction of the product.

Rating sentiment is the proverbial Holy Grail of social media monitoring. And neither Radian6 nor Alterians

SM2 have figured out how to accurately automate tonality ratings for blog posts, tweets, videos or social

network activity.

Radian6 can archive up to 18 months of data in its system, and SM2 up to 24 months, so one canretroactively search for content in the blogosphere if one wants to benchmark year on year.

Radian6 has added useful dashboards that enable one to segment out which social media one wants to view.

For instance, if one only wants to see tweets, one can set up a dashboard just for tracking micro media.

Radian6 is the winner when it comes to user-interface and ease of use.

Both the tools are tied on functionality and price. However, Radian6 is slightly ahead with its superior user-

friendly interface, integration with other social media listening tools and better workflow.


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8 Annexure 1: Open Source Listening Tools and Their

applications1. Twilert

Functions like Google Alerts

Twitter-focused Listening Tool

Geo/location-based advanced search options available

2. Twoolr

Again Twitter-focused tool

Complete Twitter following Analysis only

3. Hootsuite (OpenSource Version)

Has Comprehensive Analytics for both Twitter and Facebook and Listening

Limited features and access only for one team member

Supports Ads and RSS/Atom Feeds

4. Twitter Analytics

Twitter-specific Analytics only

Gives you analysis of interactions as per time-zone, tweet headlines, and conversation history, clicks

and regional analysis for any keywords (even competitors)

5. Socialbakers (Open Source Version)

Offers Analytics for both Facebook and LinkedIn including statistics based on country also

6. Kurrently

Gives real-time search engine results for keywords from Twitter and Facebook

One also has options to search on Kurrently, Google, Bing, Baidu and YouTube through FB, Twitter

or Both

7. Social Mention

Excellent Listening Tool

Works like Google Alerts but it works across the web and not specific to any of the social media sites

8. Klout

Analytic Tool for Twitter and Facebook

Measures awareness on Twitter and Facebook

Also helps identify Influencers across these media


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Also helps benchmark against competitors

Measures reach, amplification and network and based on that, it gives one a Klout score a unit

indicating ones online influence

9. Blogsearch.Google.com

A complete Blog-Search and Blog-Listening tool

10. Twitterfall

Again a twitter-focused Listening Tool

11. Topsy

Comprehensive Twitter Search Engine

12. TwitterCounter

Gives Twitter Profile Statistics

13. CoTweet (Open Source)

Browser based Total Social Media Management product with limited features in Open Source

For Twitter only in Open Source

14. Facebook Insights

Only does Facebook analytics

15. YouTube Insight

Provides analytics on YouTube pages including page views and demographic breakdown, countries-

based analytics.

16. TweetStats

Handy Open Source tool that only gives twitter statistics

Helps see how many tweets one has posted, got how many replies;

Also helps one see how many tweets ones competitor posted and their web-interaction

One can also see this information for different timelines

17. Twitter Analyzer

Complete Twitter Analyzer just as the name suggests

No registration also required; hence can help observe competitors

Shows level of tweets over time, conversation level, popularity, reach graph, etc.

18. Boardreader

Best forum search engines around

Excellent analytics suite to find what people are saying about ones brand in forums


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Search functionality not intuitive but results make up for it

One can group search by time and see overall trend in forum mentions as well as drill down into

individual results to see mentions

19. CoComment

Handy browser extension/Plug-in to monitor comments on blogs (both - the blogs one has started and

the blogs one has just commented on)

20. Yahoo Site Explorer

Interesting way to track the inbound links to ones sites

Can also help track that of competitors and hence, help choose what inbound links to chase

Results might not be 100% accurate though

21. Omgili Graphs

Bad design of website but excellent Analytics

Gives option to compare different search terms and hence can help track campaigns, events,

products and analyse their popularity level or compare.

Provides graphical results that can be embedded on sites

22. IceRocket

Blog Search Engine

Results not really trustworthy

23. Compete

Helps access site traffic either for oneself or ones competitors

Can compare up to 3 sites to access traffic trends over the past 12 months in OpenSource version

and free overview of traffic sources for the particular site and which keywords are people using to find

the site.


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P 21 f 22

9 Reference

The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms, Q3 2010

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Social CRM

PR 20/20 Social Media Monitoring Tools Comparison Guide

Listening 2.0 White Paper from Converseon

Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services Ideya Market Report, 2nd Edition May 2011

Social Media Intelligence Platforms from Lenati

http://pauldunay.com/how-to-choose-a-social-media-listening-platform-for-b2b-marketing/
http://pauldunay.com/how-to-choose-a-social-media-listening-platform-for-b2b-marketing/http://pauldunay.com/how-to-choose-a-social-media-listening-platform-for-b2b-marketing/

social media listening tool a comparative study (1)

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