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Social Media Monitoring Tools Benchmarking the Competitive Landscape

Eric Anderson, VP of Emerging MediaJamie Beckland, Emerging Media Specialist

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The reality is, most brands are NOT using social media monitoring tools right now.

And generally, their reasons for holding back are valid.

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For one thing, any social media investment faces scrutiny right now.

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And the space is still very confusing and unsettled.

And dashboards. Lots and lots of dashboards.

Lots of new proprietary terms to learn…

Online Promoter Score

Sentiment Analysis

Brand Association Map (BAM)

Community Health Index

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Nevertheless, we believe that a modest investment in monitoring is the single most important step for brands to take in social

media.

Why? Four reasons.

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1. The risk is far greater when you don’t monitor every day. Just ask Domino’s.

 

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2. It’s a very efficient way to measure your brand equity and impact.

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3. It’s the best way to do field observations on your target audience.

Tough to do here

Easy to do here

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4. If knowledge is power, monitoring will allow digital marketers to rule the world.

 

You become the hub of vital information that others in your organization—PR, HR, Branding, and Sales—can use.

 

Friendly staff51%

Nice facilities21%

Strong programs18%

Equipment5%

Certification4%

Customer support

1%

Competitive Insight -- Marketing 5Testimonial – Marketing/PR 3Brand Defense – Marketing/PR 1Employee Issue -- HR 2

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So, how do you choose a social media monitoring tool?

First, two general observations:

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In general, all of the tools do a good job of scraping content...

 

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And, in general, all of the tools do a poor job of analyzing content.

All analysis is keyword-based. Keywords are great for sorting, but nearly useless for picking up the emotional nuances of a conversation.

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So, in evaluating these tools, we view their ability to find, sort, present, and export social media content to be much more important than their analytical abilities.*

 

*If you need human analysis, call us instead.

 

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Competitive Set

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Social Media Monitoring ToolsCost vs. Feature Set

Cost

Featu

re S

et

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Evaluation in three main areas:1. Listening activities

2. Capacity for insights3. Responding capabilities

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Listening Activities

Real-Time (incl. keyword alerts)

Time-Delayed

Only “currently relevant”

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Listening Activities But Real-Time is only useful in some situations:

– Crisis management/monitoring– Customer support

Not necessary for:– Trend analysis– Conversation influencers– Sentiment

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Listening Activities

RSS-based Web Scrapes

-includes corporate sites, voting sites, Yellow Pages/Yelp, etc.

Data collection method causes a huge price difference.

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Listening Activities Apart from RSS caveat, sources are broadly similar

across products.– Blogs– Blog Comments– Forums– Boards– Community Sites– Twitter– Publically-available Facebook/MySpace data

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Listening Activities Data set may be slightly different from one product

to the next… But this is not a cause for concern because it is a

representative set; major hubs are included for all.

Big gap: No product has a good handle on video or audio.

Can index text around video assets, e.g., titles, descriptions, and comments.

No product offers mobile conversation data.

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Capacity for Insights: Reporting Suites

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Reporting Suites One primary goal of these tools is to make meaning

out of the information.

Not surprisingly, the sophistication of reporting capabilities is a big factor in pricing.

Baseline reporting features include:– Sentiment Analysis (positive/negative)– Topic Trending (conversations over time)– Tag Clouds (most popular terms)– Term Count Comparisons (bar/pie charts)– Drill-down capabilities

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Sentiment Analysis

Machine-generated (max 75% accurate)

-can be overwritten by user

Manual

Human-sampled

None

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High-End Reporting Cymfony: Human analysis

– Ethnographic analysis of sample data set leads insight generation

Visible: BrandCloud Maps– Mapping multiple data points against each

other, e.g., sentiment/term density/competitive set

Spiral16: Virtualization– Shows interactive map of how sites are linked

together, indicating high-influence sites

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Responding/Engagement CapabilitiesNo CRM Light CRM

Full-blown CRM

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Responding/Engagement Capabilities Light CRM (Radian6 and Scout Labs): assign to

internal contacts, follow up, mark complete Full-blown CRM (Visible): All sites’ usernames and

passwords stored within system. Users can process engagement directly from Visible platform.

No external CRM (e.g., Salesforce) integrations Most important engagement capability:

– Ability to assign follow-up to a specific user/department

We expect this space to continue evolving rapidly as competitors add this functionality.

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Pricing Models

Post Count (per subject)

Search Count (per subject)

High price point products are based on added service

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Final Thoughts Who will use this software in your organization?

– Your Agency– Marketing– PR– Customer Service– Product Development

How quickly/widely will it be adopted?– Scalability becomes important– Multi-user/customized interfaces become crucial

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Questions?

Thank you!

Jamie Beckland, Emerging Media Specialistjbeckland@whitehorse.com

Eric Anderson, VP of Emerging Mediaeanderson@whitehorse.com

www.whitehorse.comTwitter: @whitehorsepdx

Blog: http://community.whitehorse.com/profiles/blog/list

© 2009 White Horse Productions, Inc. Content may not be reused without permission.

© 2009 White Horse Productions, Inc. Content may not be reused without permission.