Interesting list, but do any of these automated tools really measure reputation? Or do they just monitor your brand in specific media. Isn't reputation formed in the minds of the marketplace and the consumers -- based on actions, and deeds, and interactions and relationships? I'll grant that you might be able to teach computers how to think like a human, but you can't tell me that can't teach computers to think like your customers -- which is where your reputation should be measured. As someone who has been measuring reputation in all forms of media since 1986 and in social media since 1995, in my experience computer automated solutions are about 70% accurate. Are you really comfortable knowing that 30% of the data is questionable when it comes to your reputation?
Dell HP
· 4 months ago
Have you given any thought to making your additional income online?
We purchased hundreds of online programs and put them through our stringent testing process. This meant diving into each program, putting it through it’s paces, and seeing if it was actually possible to make a reasonable amount of money with it. We found a horrendous percentage of these business opportunities we tested were scams. We made a list and discussed which ones aren't a scam. If you want to make some cash online and not get scam make sure you check out http://internetscambusters.official.ws/
Blake Cahill
· 11 months ago
Dan - thanks for the mention of Visible Technologies in your list. I think Katie raises some good points in her comment. Technology can automated much of the data collection processes and in the case of our solution apply sentiment measurement but the real challenge for brands and/or their agencies is to put people and process wrappers around technology solutions to actively glean insight and react to the data points.
Blake
Jennifer Zeszut
· 11 months ago
As the CEO of yet another technology solution, you might be surprised to hear that I wholeheartedly agree with Katie. Even cutting-edge technology can only do so much. After all, this is consumer-generated media and it’s messy! It takes one’s talented team and strategic agency partners to curate the conversation and actually take action and do something about it. Scout Labs is designed to have technology do what it does best (monitor, count, score, alert, aggregate, visualize), but then enable teams of people to do what they do best (add insight, assign things to people, override computer-generated scores, delete things, add things. (Oh, and the technology learns from and gets better as humans interact with the data and each other). We think that together, humans + powerful tools make a pretty good team.
Chris Newton
· 11 months ago
Hi Dan, thanks for the Radian6 recommendation (twice!). Katie (as usual) is correct that the NLP (Natural Language Processing) aspects of social media monitoring have a way to go before rivaling humans in the accuracy department. With that in mind, we've concentrated on gathering the quantitative data social media has to offer.... there is so much more to measure than simply sentiment. 2009 is shaping up to be an interesting year, with RoI high atop many lists as the single most pressing need in the space. We're hoping to make some headway here. Great post!
Chris
Jerry Needel
· 11 months ago
Dan - we appreciate you including Nielsen BuzzMetrics here. Happy New Year to all!
jon burg
· 11 months ago
@Katie - there are a range of services out there, many of them highly human powered.
TruCast from Visible Tech is a hybrid NLP, with some human input. As is Converseon (among others).
If you're looking for a fully human powered solution, there are plenty of those as well.
Please feel free to reach out via email for recommendations. (I don't work for any od the companies listed or referenced, though I do quite a bit of work with many of them)
Andy Beal
· 11 months ago
Dan, I'm very much honored that you'd include Trackur in a list that includes solutions that cost as much as 50x the cost.
As others have said, and I know you already know, reputation monitoring tools should be just one tool in your reputation management toolbox.
Mike Spataro
· 11 months ago
Dan
Thanks for the reference. There is a clear distinction that needs to be made between monitoring and measuring reputation and doing something about it. Technologies like TruCast and TruView can help you get a read in social media and search about how you are faring but to impact change brands must act in a responsible way to build and manage their reputations. No technology can change that, but it is important to know where your brand and image stand at any point in time.
Manny Portland
· 11 months ago
Thanks for this list, but it's cluttered with generic stock art of office people. ugh
Nick DiGiacomo
· 11 months ago
@katie - Good point. Reputation is, by definition, a social evaluation, and measuring it is non-trivial. The statistical methods that most survey/polling/opinion sampling companies use aren't valid when applied to collections of opinion (and opinion about opinion) from Web-based social news and social media. Otherwise said, there are some special tricks required to distinguish between crowd-sourcing and mob-sourcing.
Techrigy.com also has a cool tool. Great list though cant wait to test all of them out. i will digg this article Steve grindvision.com
Mark
· 11 months ago
buzzmetrics looks extremely useful, thnx for the list
Easton Ellsworth, TechStartups
· 11 months ago
Dan, thanks for posting this list. I'd mainly heard of Buzzlogic before and I think they're trustworthy.
Lots of great points in the thread here, too - thanks all.
Anyone know if NewsGator still does anything of this sort?
Simon McDermott
· 11 months ago
Hi Dan,
For me this is the same old list!
US only buzz monitoring companies with no international coverage. Fine, if all buzz is American or in English. Limited actual analysis.
90% of the comments are from the vendors. Where are the people who pay for the services?
Simon
Philippe Borremans
· 11 months ago
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the list - here are my thoughts:
1) You need to combine these technologies with humans who know how to use RSS, who understand social media and the impact these can have on their brands and business... Technology alone is not the answer here...
2) There are different ways to use these tools; are you a media relations person who "monitors media" ? Or are you a marketing professional who want to analyze online buzz about a product launch ?
3) I worked with Attentio (their CEO is Simon who commented above) for one major reason; they are based in Europe and understand the "monitoring challenges" of this market; multilingual, multicultural and different attitudes towards online information and social media.
4) At the end of the day, I am still missing Klipfolio (no Mac version and I just converted) - this was my favorite monitoring dashboard when I was a PR manager at IBM. But then again, you have to understand RSS and know what to monitor for and where to do it...
Denis
· 11 months ago
@simon mcdermott
Hi Simon, actually in FrozenFrogs, an Italian digital agency, we use Radian6 for our clients very successfully.
As above they say, it works by keywords... so we just need to work on italian keywords! :D The coverage is basically worldwide... sometimes we cross reference with other tools and we hardly missed a post/contribution.
There are two things that I love most about Radian6:
- Flexibility: all the graphs, piecharts, trends, are build as you need. If you find out a particular topic, you can lay it down in a chart to better represent it. - Support: it's great, I started using it in september and it had loads of improvements.
Simon
· 11 months ago
Hi Denis, thanks for the feedback, with Italian you are lucky because Italian buzz is normally confined to Italy. With French, German and Spanish there are border issues meaning keyword classification doesn't work as well.
I don't doubt that some of the providers have nice features in our experience they fail when trying to build a decent international coverage AND give support when you need it. Admittedly some will make a presence in large markets like Italy, but are they there now?
Simon
Daniel
· 11 months ago
Hey Dan,
Thanks you very much for mentioning BrandsEye on your list, nice to be recognized.
We believe that to really add value to a brands ORM strategy is having the ability not only to track mentions of your brand online but have some way of quantifying what effect this has on your over all reputation, online and offline.
For this reason BrandsEye supply you with a real time reputation report that you can request at any time. There is more about this particular function of BrandsEye on our blog; http://www.brandseye.com/blog/post/1761/how-to-...
Thanks again for the mention! If you have any more questions about BrandsEye and its functionality please dont hesitate to contact me!
Daniel
Pete Blackshaw
· 11 months ago
Nice contribution to the broader industry with this list, Dan. No doubt there will be many more in the 2009 summary. I and many of my colleagues have been in this business for nearly ten years, and I can assure you there's no "secret sauce" to monitoring reputation. Automation is a critical starting -- a "price of entry," and relentless innovation is a must against a backdrop of incessant social media evolution -- but there are so many other variable in the mix. It's one thing to have great sensors; its another to understand what to look for in the first place, and that typically requires an almost fanatical, in-depth understanding of the brand -- brand equity, brand history, brand claims (or over-promises), brand "go to market" strategy (well beyond online). Great brand reputation monitoring is a process of metering the conversation against all or a mix of those variables. At Nielsen, we tend to put a great deal of emphasis on the other "contextual" factors influencing (or eroding) the reputation: media spend, site traffic, search queries, customer service expectations, Wikipedia's POV, and more. You really can't look at any of this in a silo if you are to create meaningful and "actionable" value for increasingly cost-conscious and resource-sensitive clients. Getting that piece right requires a really strong mix of technology/automation, superb people (who really understand branding & consumer fundamentals), and a "mash-up" mindset/framework that can look at the "conversation" in relationship to other variables. The consulting team I lead, for example, tends to focus a great deal of my energy & capacity on understanding the symbiotic relationship between customer service & conversation; the data we analyze often leads us conclude that brands in search of a reputational face-lift are far better served by focusing on customer service fundamentals (e.g. picking up the phone, welcoming direct feedback) than much of the "cool" stuff in social media.
Thanks for advancing this conversation and exploratory.
Shirley
· 11 months ago
Interesting tools, but for some reason, I am anti-paid tools, especially given the free tolls out there. Besides, some of these are overpriced.
However, if I were running a large enterprise, I might consider them, as they do appear to simplify some types of analysis and reporting.
Perry Hewitt
· 11 months ago
Terrific recap of the players: many strong solutions out there.
Agree with the commenters above that the humans should so what they're best at -- the analysis and insight -- and let the machines handle the scale. Crimson Hexagon puts the human insight on the front end with training the opinion analysis. It's definitely a cost-conscious environment, but we're hearing increased demand for smart listening, and consulting where it adds the most value.
George
· 11 months ago
These resources are fine, but you should really try Social Radar from Infegy. These guys have 10 times more information that all the rest combined. Greatest resource for real brand tracking online. Including a HUGE robust of features. It'll blow your mind. Perfect for marketing or ad agencies, and great guys running this!
Hey Dan, Really appreciate the inclusion of Cision in your top 10 list of reputation tracking tools. Cision’s social media service partnered with Cision’s global measurement of mainstream media coverage are perfect tools for tracking corporate reputation. Thanks again for the mention. Scott Rojas, Director of Product Management
John Bell
· 11 months ago
Tools, tools, tools. Appreciate the short list of what is actually hundreds of different tool providers. Like a few commenters have mentioned - there is a myth that a tool can automate your listening and engaging program. We have evaluated as many as 30 of the top tools including most that are your list (and some that didn't make it like Crimson Hexagon). Many have strengths. Many are a waste of money. None of them preclude the need for a smart strategist to analyze and take action.
Look for solutions to do some of these four functions:
Collect cgm "mentions" - the magic to this solution is who looks at blogs, forums, twitter, reveiew sites in the tens of millions (or even better, those that scrape Google/Technorati). Those who rely on a small collection of sources put you at a disadvantage 9 times out of 10. Also look to those that are branching out into other languages (e.g. Radian6)
Sort and Rate - collecting millions of mentions is only useful once there is a way to sort through them and rate them that makes sense. Some systems are playing with semi-automated sentiment (Visible and Crimson). Some systems just make it easy for the user to do the rating. Be careful of grand claims here.
Reporting - it's all about the single report and the visualizations. Just cause we can count a billion things doesn't mean that we want a report with a billion KPIs. Look for those systems that display the information in succinct, even visual form.
Action - what do you do with this information? That cannot be automated. That is one of teh things we do here at 360 Digital Influence/Ogilvy. Having a monitoring solution with no intent for action - either defensive or pro-active, makes little sense.
Be careful out there. The tools help. But they cannot do the job we and others on this thread do.
Denis
· 11 months ago
great point John... so far I am very happy with a tool that can help me identify the main topics and trends.
thanks god there is no full automation... first because I would be useless (and fired!) and second... it would be scary if a tool can understand to and answers to online conversation!
Martin Edic (Techrigy)
· 11 months ago
Peter, All good points. On language: SM2 pulls results in whatever language the keywords are entered in and currently offers sentiment/tone in English, Spanish, German and Dutch with more languages coming. Regarding sentiment: Unless the provider does human analysis sentiment is nothing more than an indicator. Engagement and tracking of work flow are important. We offer the ability to export results with user-configurable fields of associated meta-data (up to 35 fields per result) with notes. You can export permalinks and notes, for example, to track your responses and follow-ups. This will all be automated (tracking and reporting-Â activity requires real humans!) in our next release. Finally, I totally agree on the customer support analogy. This is where you reap the real benefits. It helps to think of it as customer support both before and after the sale.
Aaron Dignan
· 11 months ago
As someone who has used the majority of these tools, one thing to note is price. These solutions have very different price points for (in some cases) parity products. Perhaps an updated version with prices mentioned (or ranges) would help those out there trying to make a decision.
martin Edic (Techrigy)
· 11 months ago
In the interests of transparency our pricing is here: http://www.techrigy.com/sm2_pricing.php . Larger accounts are priced according a projection of number of results collected. Please note that all Pro plans include unlimited search keyword phrases and Profiles and we do not charge User fees.
Jennifer Zeszut
· 11 months ago
Happy to share pricing, as well. Scout Labs, which is a web-based application to power an enterprise or agency’s social media monitoring and engagement efforts, offers robust analysis including automated sentiment detection. We are excited to launch next month with plans at either $250 or $350 per month, and that includes access for an unlimited number of users.
TV Spy
· 11 months ago
Sounds an awful like a paid ad to be honest. Most of what they do you can do yourself with some simple tools available for free and a bit of learning of seo
Glenn Fannick
· 11 months ago
Certainly no "top 10" list is ever complete.
So here I dutifully note that you missed a leading product in the space, Dow Jones Insight (which I work for.) We were a "strong contender" in the Forrester Waveâ„¢: Brand Monitoring survey in 2006 and expect another strong showing in new version coming out soon.
We take the view that social media needs to be monitored and measured alongside mainstream media and that you need a proper balance of technology to process volume and human analysis to get the focus just right.
Valerie Combs
· 11 months ago
Thanks, Dan, for including BuzzLogic on this impressive list. To echo the perspective put forth by Katie and others, the process of measuring (and ultimately managing) online reputation can certainly be helped by a tools provider -- but not wholly replaced. The value of any paid tool is its ability to make everyday activities driving a reputation management program that much more strategic and streamlined. As such, our approach to date has been to apply our own analysis to surface the sites/conversations most likely shaping perception around certain topics/brand/products - then provide brands with the tools to easily facilitate an intelligent action plan as a result. For some clients, we partner with experts like Katie to incorporate human analysis on top of a technology-driven one, which has proven successful in the past.
Sid Mohasseb
· 11 months ago
Hi Dan-
Informative post and very thoughtful comments – however the devil is in the details. I have found this is a very confused space and some claims are outrageous and simply untrue (playing with words to claim functionality) – here is some more detailed thoughts:
1) All of the systems mentioned – from $1 a day version to $100k plus are monitoring the known (searched based) – they all work based on the same premises of “you assume†you search – resulting in the discovery of the known and very often inaccurately – they are all searched based (some using google, others buying data from others!). 2) All the systems have a fundamental “trust†issue – 1) am I searching for the right thing? 2) using a key word can be very misleading - not recognizing the difference between Dove the bird, Dove the Shampoo and Dove the soap – can you trust what you get? ; it is nice to know you had xxx mentions but can you spend millions on a campaign based on irrelevant? 3) They all report in a vacuum – meaning there is no frame of references – “how well am I doing†is kind of there, but the “compared to what†is missing. 4) They all (and there are many more out there by the way; my last count was over 160) use the same jargon of Natural Language processing, machine learning, etc. The fact is you can get those basic capabilities using open source software for free – and as some one commented above – they can not scale and produce very sub-optimal results – you can not fake relevance and accuracy. 5) Another to the point comment above is: if you don’t care about accuracy or relevance and just using this to impress your PR client or satisfy your curiosity “go free†or “cheap†based on what the visualization pleases you. On the more expensive side, I have spoken to many brands who use the more expensive solutions some are abandoning them for lack of relevance and some have given up because it takes so long to implement and get it right – after all you have to think of every possible variation your brand can be described and every possible attribute people can use to set the system up and then as one user put it – it becomes like drinking from a fire hose!
I will not use your blog as a PR platform (so no company name), but all of the above issues we have solved. Our technology with four pending patents is not based on search but reverse analytics (kind of reverse of an OLAP) – we can discover what is not obvious – no need for search terms, etc. Also, we have a fundamentally new approach to NLP; we can scale, as we can process up to 70 times faster than any other technology out there (big claim!) and produce results that are on the scale of magnitude over +40% more accurate and relevant (another big claim) than all the companies mentioned here and the other hundred plus out there.
Dan, If you are tired of the topic and want to move on to a new post, I understand, if not, please allow me to complete your research and show you how details matter. Tnx.
Sid
Cari
· 11 months ago
We would have loved to be on your list but we're new. I totally agree with you, everyone should be involved in social media to some extent. We are focused on getting small and medium-sized businesses involved in relevant online conversations. We monitor, measure and engage in discussions on blogs, forums and discussion boards. The best part is that it is all done in real time.
We are currently functioning as an agency. But we will soon be releasing a consumer version of our software that will allow companies to self-serve.
Cari Buzz.io
Martin Edic (Techrigy)
· 11 months ago
In response to Sid, we own all the data we search through. We've been collecting conversations and associated meta-data since 2007. We're adding tens of millions of records daily. We've recently added tone (emotion) to our sentiment but it is still a blunt instrument. There is no such thing as an accurate sentiment analysis that does not use humans to judge the actual intent of the writer. I resent the implication that this is a gimmick (professional social media monitoring and analytics), as we have many users finding it exceptionally valuable to their businesses. I do agree that without ownership of the underlying data any tool is essentially a version of one of the free search tools, most of which do one thing or niche fairly well.
Martin Edic (Techrigy)
· 11 months ago
If you are going to brag about your technology, show us something we can look at including a web site, company etc., otherwise it can be taken as vaporware. This is a product discussion so it is perfectly appropriate to tell us who you are and what you do, in fact it is useful for those are seeking information to make a decision. Happy New Years!
Matt Russell
· 11 months ago
Sorry, but your list is really only 9 companies. Cision IS Radian6.
Grover
· 11 months ago
For every brand I've met, these products provide masturbation at best and self-flagellation at worst.
Don't believe it? Take a look at who commented! Try to find just one CMO who thinks these things valuable.
J. Acai
· 11 months ago
I wish I owned a business. I'd be reputation tracking like a mofo.
Thibault Hanin
· 11 months ago
Good list of service providers, although mostly US-centered. There are also valuable solutions with a more European focus (Synthesio, RTGI or Attentio to mention just a few ones).
giles palmer
· 11 months ago
dan, always good to find things like this when you're ceo of one of the companies spending so much time and effort working on a solution in this space (even if we weren't mentioned! :( )
it's an interesting question to pose - whether these and similar services are worth paying for. . The problem that is trying to be solved is intuitively a big and important one. But it is difficult to define. "Managing reputation" isn't it because none of these tools (or our one Brandwatch) do it. Things like conversation tracking and measuring marketing effectiveness are more like it, but that is very hard and imho these tools are close to or on the tipping point of when they might be able to actually do this. Then i think we'll have lots of interesting applications emertging. In the meantime, it's great to have your support (speaking for my competition!)
Happy new year to you all
giles palmer (smarting from the fact www.brandwatch.net wasn't included!)
giles palmer
· 11 months ago
one question that all suppliers should *honestly* admit to is how they found your article
Was it 1. via their own tools 2. by getting a google alert on their / another's name (that's how i found it although Brandwatch did pick this up for our competitors Brands 3. via increased web traffic / other
It would be an interesting barometer
giles
Simon McDermott
· 11 months ago
Dear Giles,
I received an update on my mobile phone which was translated into voice recognition software which in turn told me that Attentio had not been mentioned in an overly US focussed key blog about reputation tracking and that it should have been :)
Seriously though it came through my twitter stream but I can also see its impact on our Attentio Brand Dashboard right now. Incidentally we have just added an email alert function this week, it would have also sent me an email if the blog post had of been today...
Simon
giles palmer
· 11 months ago
nice one Simon
Paul Philp
· 11 months ago
Peter,
Excellent comments. You are right on. A company's (or a brand's) reputation cant be seen as a silo. It is key element of strategy. It is not simply 'good' or 'bad'. It is 'on strategy' on some elements (key messages, value proposition) and 'off strategy' on others. The emerging challenge is to be able to track and measure all the aspects of your reputation against the goals (explicit and implict) you have set. Managing these goals in real-time take co-ordinated and integrated action across the enterprise. It will involved customer service, brand/product managment, marketing, public relations, finance, human resources, etc. The management challenges are just begining to emerge.
KDPaine
· 11 months ago
In response to other comments, I discovered this article via Google Alerts and we at KDPaine & Partners use Google Alerts and Google Analytics as the best free tools for tracking our reputation, But of course we use humans to actually evaluation what is being said. Our website is www.kdpaine.com. You can see a demo (featuring the latest results for the top ten PR agencies) by going to www.diydashboard.com entering the user name guest and the password kdpaine. Our prices start at arund $5000 a year for a do-it-yourself version, but a typical program includes some human assistance so we average around $20K per year for a typical CGM measurement program that includes Twitter, Newsgroups, Blogs, Online pubilcations, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and Social BOokmarking sites.
Johna Burke
· 11 months ago
“Metrics†without qualitative analysis (most accurately provided by humans) are really just pretty charts and graphs with no real calibration of reputation and little more than quantitative charting. While some find this adequate for their needs, others who are measuring against business initiatives, key messages and overall effectiveness need to have a partner who can interpret such elements of conversations like tonality and other sentiments impossible to for software to accurately manage their reputation.
David M
· 11 months ago
Thanks for the list. It is virtually impossible to control viral marketing but at least we can try and maneuver it somewhat with better tools and do damage control where possible.
Nic Johnson
· 11 months ago
I second Giles Palmer on that one, Brandwatch is awesome! Do check it out: http://www.brandwatch.net
geekTips
· 11 months ago
Thanks for the great list Dan.
Kathleen Hessert
· 11 months ago
One of the best things about lists is they prompt people to evaluate. Obviously the more than 80 comments prove that you hit a chord. We specialize in reputation management for the sports, entertainment and lifestyle markets and use a proprietary tracking tool Buzz Manager in combination with human intelligence for all of our clients. Interestingly enough, as lead consultant for a new company, Legacy Direct, Inc. we take reputation much further by measuring their reputations via the Legacy Scorecard and developing a Legacy Game Plan for athletes and entertainers. Legacy is based on 6 cornerstones including performance (athletics), public exposure, business relationships, resources/infrastructure, philanthrophy/social impact and sustainability. We measure then all including the buzz tracked and help clients build, enrich and protect that legacy- their reputation. Buzz Manager is an importaqnt piece though only part of the equation.
Dean
· 11 months ago
Thanks for the write-up, Dan, a good way to kick off the new year, very comprehensive.
I'd like to point out (and now you know that we monitor mentions of our own company as well as our competitors! :) that Collective Intellect also offers Listen and Learn monitoring products that compete with the good folks at Radian6 and BuzzLogic/Visible/Cymfony, respectively.
Keep up the good work.
Dean Westervelt Social Media Analytics CI
Cahill
· 11 months ago
Good write up! And good comments, too. I was really interested in this topic about 9 months ago and signed up for ReputationDefender's MyReputation product. I really liked the reach of thir search and then added MyEdge. Pretty good stuff but probably could have done ~60% of it myself. I'll keep using these tools and would recommend, especially for less sophisticated web users.
Leon
· 11 months ago
@simon mcdermott "US only buzz monitoring companies with no international coverage."
Simon we are not US only, we do multilingual monitoring aswell as English. We also break down by region. Infact I know one recent client who signed up for us evaluated Attentio first and then came to us so I am sure we are doing something right ;-)
Awesome list and review - thanks. Top stuff! If anyone has current pricing details of Radian 6 amnd BuzzLogic, I'd be interested to hear. Last I saw, they were expensive...!!??
David Alston
· 11 months ago
Hi Roger, I'll have Matt Brazil in the UK contact you on Radian6 pricing so you'll have the latest in pricing. Thanks for your interest.
David
Simon Myall
· 11 months ago
Hi Dan,
An excellent article. There seems to be a large number of tracking tools currently available (30+) and many without significant differentiation.
I have recently been tracking sentiment online using the Brandwatch (http://www.brandwatch.net) tool and have found the tool to be effective in providing automated semantic research. This product was omitted from you list but appears to be very similiar to 'sentiment Metrics'. Are these products in the same 'class' according to your criteria?
Nick Broom
· 11 months ago
Another good post and an interesting list with some products that I hadnt come across before.
I am, however, surprised that there is no mention of Brandwatch here (http://brandwatch.net) as I have found this to be an excellent offering in this space, with a company behind it driven to determine and provide relevant metrics that actually make sense for measuring and improving ROI on marketing and advertising, although the capabilities go much further.
I find it interesting too, that many of the comments are from vendors trying to push their own product further up the ranks and shift product rather than help answer the ultimate questions of what is it that I am actually measuring...
Without some idea of the conversations/mentions, their source and their nature (ie sentiment) then it is a hard task to set an engagement strategy to do anything with that wealth of conversation. All these tools are only a step towards providing some clarity and insight to activity that THEN enables an intervention or measurement strategy to be set. Used correctly, the output can feed directly into the entire business strategy resulting in not just sentiment checking and buzz, but new product development and relevant, cost-effective advertising strategy.
Otherwise they are just pretty graphs that can be used to cheer up your board of directors or justify your job.
I would be interested to hear your take on the Brandwatch product in comparison to those above, Dan.
Nick Broom
· 11 months ago
Another good post and an interesting list with some products that I hadnt come across before.
I am, however, surprised that there is no mention of Brandwatch here (http://brandwatch.net) as I have found this to be an excellent offering in this space, with a company behind it driven to determine and provide relevant metrics that actually make sense for measuring and improving ROI on marketing and advertising, although the capabilities go much further.
I find it interesting too, that many of the comments are from vendors trying to push their own product further up the ranks and shift product rather than help answer the ultimate questions of what is it that I am actually measuring...
Without some idea of the conversations/mentions, their source and their nature (ie sentiment) then it is a hard task to set an engagement strategy to do anything with that wealth of conversation. All these tools are only a step towards providing some clarity and insight to activity that THEN enables an intervention or measurement strategy to be set. Used correctly, the output can feed directly into the entire business strategy resulting in not just sentiment checking and buzz, but new product development and relevant, cost-effective advertising and brand deployment strategy.
Otherwise they are just pretty graphs that can be used to cheer up your board of directors or justify your job.
I would be interested to hear your take on the Brandwatch product in comparison to those above, Dan.
Joseph Fiore
· 11 months ago
I'm glad I caught this discussion, even though I'm late and we weren't mentioned. Some strong points have been made thus far concerning the list, and my reasons for chiming in are twofold. The first is to clarify a comment regarding the effectiveness of ORM tools to manage reputations - a point which does not reflect our commitment to our clients and the ORM space as a whole. The second is to encourage visitors of this blog who are evaluating ORM vendors to consider adding us to their review list.
RepuMetrix has been assisting the leading companies and their brands since 2005. This space has since blossomed into an industry/enterprise, and while we consider ourselves fortunate to have been in the lobby to witness its rise, we haven't been sitting idle. On the contrary, our platform of Reputation Measurementâ„¢ products and services have evolved over the years to deliver on the task of safeguarding online brands and reputation with the timely retrieval and capture of relevant online discussion.
All our tiers of service combine machine analysis with human review to deliver precision ORM, with features that include online dashboards, real-time monitoring, metric, trending and translation in over 30 languages, smart filtering (which means malware, splog and adware-free ORM), risk interpretation, and a depth of sourcing that is second to none. A depth of sourcing so exhaustive that our Adhoundâ„¢ finds itself playing a key role in diligently monitoring online classifieds, to ensure an <a href="http://repumetrix.com/blog/index.php? blog=3&title=be_ad_keen_reputation_monitoring_part_3&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1">ORM monitoring scope and strategy which is inclusive of online auctions, newspaper classifieds, and newly emerging online marketplace sites.
Our business philosophy continues to be built on the notion of providing leading online monitoring systems, and as many have already pointed out, this also means reserving some recognition that our greatest competitive advantage is found in our approach to not only providing best-of-breed technology, but must also be reflected in our approach to pricing.
To this end, and in the interest of abating the concerns raised here concerning pricing disparities, RepuMetrix continues to offer a fixed pricing structure with its formula of delivering the best of class online monitoring tools in their category. Our latest offering RepuTrackâ„¢ continues this commitment, and we would encourage those interested in witnessing what we can do first-hand to contact us, or to schedule an online demonstration.
Thanks!
Joseph
Joseph Fiore
· 11 months ago
@Dan - just a heads-up that I'm using Firefox, and the comment box cuts off 1/4 of the visible view of the text you are entering (or rather, blindly typing). I had to use notepad to draft and submit my comment and... well you can see the formatting gaffe that creates ;)
Dean Schmit
· 11 months ago
I am sure these are all very effective tools, however none of them address the need to manage User Generated Content (UGC) at the point of sale.
Most businesses have either a product or service they provide, and in some method by which it can be bought online. UGC can now be found on almost every major online retail site - for example, browse products at www.target.com. For a more industry-specific example, check out your favorite hotel on any of the major online travel sites (i.e. Expedia, TripAdvisor, Hotels.com).
Consumer Reviews on sites such as these will impact buying decisions at the point of sale. Blog searches (and variations) do not include content from retail sites.
The Hospitality Industry does have some tools designed for this purpose, such as ReviewAnalyst (www.reviewanalyst.com), however is anyone aware of a program designed to monitor product reviews on retail sites, Amazon, etc.? I was recently shopping LCD tv's on Amazon, and the product I selected took a very long time to load when I clicked for more information. I suspect this might have been related to the 581 reviews attached to it!
I would be very curious to hear about a product that can do this sort of thing.
Joseph Fiore
· 11 months ago
@Dean - we track based on mention, whether that happens on a consumer review site, social networking site, classifieds, or what we call a gripe site (ie. companyxyzsucks.com). Again, our depth of sourcing covers the entire online terrain and makes it entirely feasible to capture content that is being generated at the point of sale, and we assist reach out and engagement strategies by providing metrics which serve as a snapshot of each incident as it happens. The most recent real-life example occurred (and to some extent still persists) with the contraversy over pricing disparities between Canada and the US, and how Web audiences called out brand incidents as they were flipping through catalogs or directly at vendor Websites, and then turned to their blogs, forums/message boards, twitter, youtube and review sites to publicly vent about it. An impact felt with returned merchandise and continued efforts to mobilize support for outright product/store boycotts.
Thibault (Synthesio)
· 10 months ago
@Dean - We do indeed track retail and review sites, such as Ciao, TripAdvisor, Kelkoo and many others. For example, we currently monitor hotel reviews for a worldwide hospitality company and provide them with a global dashboard + drill-down on details up to the hotel level.
Amazon is a particular case and we found that monitoring it as a whole makes little sense, but for particular products (laptops, etc.), it can be easily included in our scope.
Hope this answers your questions.
Scoail Media Monitoring
· 10 months ago
We have used Radian6 and it is an excellent tool for uncovering all that is being said about you / your company online. The harder part though is developing a response plan to what is said about your company on the web which is what my company and I consult on.
Sebastian Rosenfled
· 10 months ago
@Dean - When it comes to source of information and sites to track, there are two ways to do it: one is to search the entire network as search engines do, the other is to select wich sites (or type of sites, ex. "blogs", "review sites", "journals") you want to track. This is giveing us great results when we analise and compare the influence of each source/site. This allows you to focus your online efforts first on the most influencial sites.
David Alston
· 10 months ago
To the guys at SocialTrending (comment 102) and everyone else here who talked about their Radian6 experience - thank you. It was very kind of you to share it.
Frank Lawrenson
· 10 months ago
Are there any applications available that can track one company/product against a large variety of others and draw meaningful conclusions? Thanks for publishing the list.
Glenn Fannick
· 10 months ago
@Frank Lawrenson: Yes, this is a strength of Dow Jones Insight (http://solutions.dowjones.com/insight), and I suspect a few others on this list which provide a comprehensive approach to corporate media measurement and monitoring.
Giles Palmer
· 10 months ago
@Frank Lawrenson: I agree with Glenn, i'd be amazed if this isn't out-of-the-box for any of these apps - it is in Brandwatch
Leon Chaddock
· 10 months ago
I agree with Glenn and Giles on this, most of these applications allow competitive intelligence and comparisons. With Sentiment Metrics the client can add the brands/key phrases/ topics/ people into the system they wish to track and then run comparisons on them. So they can compare values like sentiment and buzz volume, creating share of voice metrics and the like.
Frank raises an interesting point - whether the comparison of client and competitors is meaningful.
I've seen many companies put a lot of effort into developing their own tracking, then add in some competitor names and call it a day.
Well, when you look at the resulting graphs and reports of course it looks like the client demolished their competition. Makes for happy PR people but not a lot of value.
I think this is another important distinction in the market. Some companies need help developing search strings, determining which metrics to use and managing the results. Others have a team of people to do that and just need the darn software, thankyouverymuch.
Besides the feature variation in the actual platforms listed, companies should consider what level of consulting/service fits their needs.
Joseph Fiore
· 10 months ago
I'm glad I checked the notifications to this post, as there have been some excellent points raised throughout, and to respond to the questions posed on competitive review, this is a service we offer. One important advantage to raise concerning the tools mentioned thus far is how they provide information liquidity and transfer of knowledge.
We had one memorable incident with a client where their communications person (and lead for a major account) just up and left the company. When they sat down to apprise the client of the changes in account lead, they asked what happened to all the brand and reputation tracking they had been shown up until that point, prompting a very nervous call from our agency client. In few words, they were ecstatic to hear that the campaign monitoring had not walked out the door, and was accessible by establishing a new account holder.
Tom Britton
· 10 months ago
I agree with Joseph and believe that for anything more than small company, hiring an Agency that uses a tool like radian6 or repumetrix (haven't used this one yet but seems pretty good) for social media monitoring and online brand reputation is the way to go. Trying to train someone to understand what to look for and the impact of the posted message is very difficult and is further complicated by the SEO implications a response may have. Somethings your going to want to optimize and make visible while others you just need to overlook as a short term blip.
Tracy
· 10 months ago
I'm a fan of a new product called Spark from a small software company called Spiral16. Spark is similar to Radian6's solution, but seems to have more advanced features. It's fairly new to the marketplace, but I would definitely put it on this list..
Hi, has anyone used SM2 by Techrigy? They have what is called a Freemium account that's complimentary, as well as paid services that return more results. Would be interested in anyone's experience with them.
Miguel
· 9 months ago
Radian 6 totally rocks. My company uses it and what impresses me most is the customer support. Not only that the company is constantly updating and adding sites.
I would totally recommend Radian 6.
David Alston
· 9 months ago
Miguel, that's very kind of you to say. Thank you. We are certainly very proud of our customer support team for their dedication to helping customers and our R&D team for their focus on innovation.
And thank you so much for choosing to work with Radian6. We appreciate it. Cheers. David
Tony Priore
· 9 months ago
It is unclear how you arrived at your top 10 list. If you had reviewed the recent Forrester wave report: "Listening Platforms, Q1 2009" you would have been aware of Biz360 -- www.biz360.com. Forrester cited Biz360 as one of the top seven leading listening platform vendors. Forrester states, "While brand monitoring platforms faithfully report on brand conversations and competitive news, they do not go far enough to turn this information into marketing insights. Forrester reported on the "next evolution of this market in which listening platforms not only listen to conversations but also extract insights and deliver those insights in ways to facilitate a change in marketing strategy."
In this context, Forrester identified "Biz360 is a strong performer with an innovative product offering — Opinion Insights" and a "solid offering characterized by balanced data coverage, strong reporting tools, and cross media coverage."
For the record, Biz360 monitors and measures social and traditional media on behalf of a wide range of global 2000 clients such as Allstate, Nortel, Shell, AAA and Verizon among others. Our solution is built on a proprietary technology platform which aggregates, measures and analyzes information across a global network of content sources. We employ current data mining, statistical modeling and text analysis techniques such as NLP to assess the nature, impact and tone of consumer generated conversations, news articles and product reviews/ opinions. Clients have access to a variety of relevant tools and metrics designed to yield actionable insights in flexible formats.
Our three solutions, Community Insights (75 MM CGM sources including blogs, message boards/forums, social networks and microblogs), Media Insights (50K+ traditional print, broadcast and online news media) and Opinion Insights (10K online consumer and expert product review sources) work together and separately to enable our clients to analyze the broadest set of content that influences the perception of their brands. We believe that different types of communication have different influence and it is important to be able to “connect the dots” by examining the influence of each. I invite you to contact me directly to learn more about our company and the solutions we offer.
Daniel Dessinger
· 8 months ago
Interesting that I don't see any author responses to comments. With 50+ comments, I would want to engage my readers so that I reinforce their positive impression of my personal brand.
Visible Technologies very possibly offers the most amazing reputation management tool available to the public. I'm disappointed that a screen shot wasn't provided to showcase their expensive awesomeness.
David Rosen
· 5 months ago
I like a lot of these tools. And I was never been more excited than when I saw one of them bring a communication model I had studied in college to life in all its pulsating bloggy glory. But as someone who spends his life in the B-B PR world, I have to assert that sentiment analysis tools will ever come close, much less replace, people. (Yes, transhumanists, even when the singularity arrives.) Seriously -- there are some blog entries where it'll take me up to five minutes to analyze and weigh all the nuances and the comments beneath them before I can assign an accurate sentiment score. Add in the fluid nature of communications between blogs and there's just no way the linguist quants can assemble the social media humpty dumpty. You need people -- senior people with lots of experience and context -- to do B-B social media audits with any degree of accuracy. That aside, these tools can make conducting the audits and tracking ongoing conversations a lot easier.
josiestewart
· 4 months ago
Great article, thanks Dan.
Now to choose the one that is best for out company.
Josie @platform45
josiestewart
· 4 months ago
Great article, thanks Dan.
Now to choose the one that is best for out company.
Josie @platform45
Ace the sharp
· 3 months ago
hi Dan, really enjoyed this post - was wondering if you will be doing an update on this topic with an international blend of monitoring tools/service. As you know international social network activity and revenue potential (i.e. QQ) does not pale in comparison to Twitter and Facebook respectively, it would be awesome to see which companies has start to reach beyond the continent.
thanks!
Misao
· 3 months ago
Thanks, i'm interested in Reputation Defender services.
Ace the sharp
· 3 months ago
hi Dan, really enjoyed this post - was wondering if you will be doing an update on this topic with an international blend of monitoring tools/service. As you know international social network activity and revenue potential (i.e. QQ) does not pale in comparison to Twitter and Facebook respectively, it would be awesome to see which companies has start to reach beyond the continent.
thanks!
acaiberryreviews
· 3 months ago
I had no idea there would be enough clientele for even one of these companies, let alone 10.
alisonjuli23
· 2 months ago
We help you discover topics that best fit your industry niche. www.contentunltd.com
All Comments
reputation? Or do they just monitor your brand in specific media. Isn't
reputation formed in the minds of the marketplace and the consumers -- based
on actions, and deeds, and interactions and relationships? I'll
grant that you might be able to teach computers how to think like a human, but you can't tell me that can't teach computers to think like your customers -- which is where your
reputation should be measured. As someone who has been measuring reputation in
all forms of media since 1986 and in social media since 1995, in my experience
computer automated solutions are about 70% accurate. Are you really comfortable
knowing that 30% of the data is questionable when it comes to your reputation?
We purchased hundreds of online programs and put them through our stringent testing process. This meant diving into each program, putting it through it’s paces, and seeing if it was actually possible to make a reasonable amount of money with it. We found a horrendous percentage of these business opportunities we tested were scams. We made a list and discussed which ones aren't a scam. If you want to make some cash online and not get scam make sure you check out http://internetscambusters.official.ws/
Katie raises some good points in her comment. Technology can automated much
of the data collection processes and in the case of our solution apply
sentiment measurement but the real challenge for brands and/or their agencies
is to put people and process wrappers around technology solutions to actively
glean insight and react to the data points.
Blake
correct that the NLP (Natural Language Processing) aspects of social media
monitoring have a way to go before rivaling humans in the accuracy department.
With that in mind, we've concentrated on gathering the quantitative data social
media has to offer.... there is so much more to measure than simply sentiment.
2009 is shaping up to be an interesting year, with RoI high atop many lists as
the single most pressing need in the space. We're hoping to make some headway
here. Great post!
Chris
TruCast from Visible Tech is a hybrid NLP, with some human input. As is Converseon (among others).
If you're looking for a fully human powered solution, there are plenty of those as well.
Please feel free to reach out via email for recommendations. (I don't work for any od the companies listed or referenced, though I do quite a bit of work with many of them)
As others have said, and I know you already know, reputation monitoring tools should be just one tool in your reputation management toolbox.
Thanks for the reference. There is a clear distinction that needs to be made between monitoring and measuring reputation and doing something about it. Technologies like TruCast and TruView can help you get a read in social media and search about how you are faring but to impact change brands must act in a responsible way to build and manage their reputations. No technology can change that, but it is important to know where your brand and image stand at any point in time.
http://blog.vanno.com/index.php/2008/11/09/crow...
Steve
grindvision.com
Lots of great points in the thread here, too - thanks all.
Anyone know if NewsGator still does anything of this sort?
For me this is the same old list!
US only buzz monitoring companies with no international coverage.
Fine, if all buzz is American or in English.
Limited actual analysis.
90% of the comments are from the vendors.
Where are the people who pay for the services?
Simon
Thanks for the list - here are my thoughts:
1) You need to combine these technologies with humans who know how to use RSS, who understand social media and the impact these can have on their brands and business... Technology alone is not the answer here...
2) There are different ways to use these tools; are you a media relations person who "monitors media" ? Or are you a marketing professional who want to analyze online buzz about a product launch ?
3) I worked with Attentio (their CEO is Simon who commented above) for one major reason; they are based in Europe and understand the "monitoring challenges" of this market; multilingual, multicultural and different attitudes towards online information and social media.
4) At the end of the day, I am still missing Klipfolio (no Mac version and I just converted) - this was my favorite monitoring dashboard when I was a PR manager at IBM. But then again, you have to understand RSS and know what to monitor for and where to do it...
Hi Simon, actually in FrozenFrogs, an Italian digital agency, we use Radian6
for our clients very successfully.
As above they say, it works by keywords... so we just need to work on italian
keywords! :D The coverage is basically worldwide... sometimes we cross reference
with other tools and we hardly missed a post/contribution.
There are two things that I love most about Radian6:
- Flexibility: all the graphs, piecharts, trends, are build as you need. If you
find out a particular topic, you can lay it down in a chart to better represent it.
- Support: it's great, I started using it in september and it had loads of
improvements.
I don't doubt that some of the providers have nice features in our experience they fail when trying to build a decent international coverage AND give support when you need it. Admittedly some will make a presence in large markets like Italy, but are they there now?
Simon
Thanks you very much for mentioning BrandsEye on your list, nice to be recognized.
We believe that to really add value to a brands ORM strategy is having the ability
not only to track mentions of your brand online but have some way of quantifying
what effect this has on your over all reputation, online and offline.
For this reason BrandsEye supply you with a real time reputation report that you
can request at any time. There is more about this particular function of BrandsEye
on our blog; http://www.brandseye.com/blog/post/1761/how-to-...
Thanks again for the mention! If you have any more questions about BrandsEye and its functionality please dont hesitate to contact me!
Daniel
will be many more in the 2009 summary. I and many of my colleagues have been
in this business for nearly ten years, and I can assure you there's no "secret
sauce" to monitoring reputation. Automation is a critical starting -- a
"price of entry," and relentless innovation is a must against a backdrop of
incessant social media evolution -- but there are so many other variable in
the mix. It's one thing to have great sensors; its another to understand
what to look for in the first place, and that typically requires an almost
fanatical, in-depth understanding of the brand -- brand equity, brand history,
brand claims (or over-promises), brand "go to market" strategy (well beyond
online). Great brand reputation monitoring is a process of metering the
conversation against all or a mix of those variables. At Nielsen, we tend
to put a great deal of emphasis on the other "contextual" factors influencing
(or eroding) the reputation: media spend, site traffic, search queries,
customer service expectations, Wikipedia's POV, and more. You really can't
look at any of this in a silo if you are to create meaningful and "actionable"
value for increasingly cost-conscious and resource-sensitive clients. Getting
that piece right requires a really strong mix of technology/automation, superb
people (who really understand branding & consumer fundamentals), and a "mash-up"
mindset/framework that can look at the "conversation" in relationship to other
variables. The consulting team I lead, for example, tends to focus a great
deal of my energy & capacity on understanding the symbiotic relationship
between customer service & conversation; the data we analyze often leads us
conclude that brands in search of a reputational face-lift are far better served
by focusing on customer service fundamentals (e.g. picking up the phone,
welcoming direct feedback) than much of the "cool" stuff in social media.
Thanks for advancing this conversation and exploratory.
However, if I were running a large enterprise, I might consider them, as they do appear to simplify some types of analysis and reporting.
Agree with the commenters above that the humans should so what they're best at -- the analysis and insight -- and let the machines handle the scale. Crimson Hexagon puts the human insight on the front end with training the opinion analysis. It's definitely a cost-conscious environment, but we're hearing increased demand for smart listening, and consulting where it adds the most value.
These guys have 10 times more information that all the rest combined. Greatest resource for real brand tracking online. Including a HUGE robust of features. It'll blow your mind.
Perfect for marketing or ad agencies, and great guys running this!
http://infegy.com/socialradar.php
Really appreciate the inclusion of Cision in your top 10 list of reputation tracking tools. Cision’s social media service partnered with Cision’s global measurement of mainstream media coverage are perfect tools for tracking corporate reputation. Thanks again for the mention. Scott Rojas, Director of Product Management
Look for solutions to do some of these four functions:
Collect cgm "mentions" - the magic to this solution is who looks at blogs, forums, twitter, reveiew sites in the tens of millions (or even better, those that scrape Google/Technorati). Those who rely on a small collection of sources put you at a disadvantage 9 times out of 10. Also look to those that are branching out into other languages (e.g. Radian6)
Sort and Rate - collecting millions of mentions is only useful once there is a way to sort through them and rate them that makes sense. Some systems are playing with semi-automated sentiment (Visible and Crimson). Some systems just make it easy for the user to do the rating. Be careful of grand claims here.
Reporting - it's all about the single report and the visualizations. Just cause we can count a billion things doesn't mean that we want a report with a billion KPIs. Look for those systems that display the information in succinct, even visual form.
Action - what do you do with this information? That cannot be automated. That is one of teh things we do here at 360 Digital Influence/Ogilvy. Having a monitoring solution with no intent for action - either defensive or pro-active, makes little sense.
Be careful out there. The tools help. But they cannot do the job we and others on this thread do.
identify the main topics and trends.
thanks god there is no full automation... first because I would be useless
(and fired!) and second... it would be scary if a tool can understand to and
answers to online conversation!
All good points. On language: SM2 pulls results in whatever language the keywords are entered in and currently offers sentiment/tone in English, Spanish, German and Dutch with more languages coming. Regarding sentiment: Unless the provider does human analysis sentiment is nothing more than an indicator.
Engagement and tracking of work flow are important. We offer the ability to export results with user-configurable fields of associated meta-data (up to 35 fields per result) with notes. You can export permalinks and notes, for example, to track your responses and follow-ups. This will all be automated (tracking and reporting-Â activity requires real humans!) in our next release.
Finally, I totally agree on the customer support analogy. This is where you reap the real benefits. It helps to think of it as customer support both before and after the sale.
So here I dutifully note that you missed a leading product in the space, Dow Jones Insight (which I work for.) We were a "strong contender" in the Forrester Waveâ„¢: Brand
Monitoring survey in 2006 and expect another strong showing in new version coming out soon.
We take the view that social media needs to be monitored and measured alongside mainstream media and that you need a proper balance of technology to process volume and human analysis to get the focus just right.
Informative post and very thoughtful comments – however the devil is in the details. I have found this is a very confused space and some claims are outrageous and simply untrue (playing with words to claim functionality) – here is some more detailed thoughts:
1) All of the systems mentioned – from $1 a day version to $100k plus are monitoring the known (searched based) – they all work based on the same premises of “you assume†you search – resulting in the discovery of the known and very often inaccurately – they are all searched based (some using google, others buying data from others!).
2) All the systems have a fundamental “trust†issue – 1) am I searching for the right thing? 2) using a key word can be very misleading - not recognizing the difference between Dove the bird, Dove the Shampoo and Dove the soap – can you trust what you get? ; it is nice to know you had xxx mentions but can you spend millions on a campaign based on irrelevant?
3) They all report in a vacuum – meaning there is no frame of references – “how well am I doing†is kind of there, but the “compared to what†is missing.
4) They all (and there are many more out there by the way; my last count was over 160) use the same jargon of Natural Language processing, machine learning, etc. The fact is you can get those basic capabilities using open source software for free – and as some one commented above – they can not scale and produce very sub-optimal results – you can not fake relevance and accuracy.
5) Another to the point comment above is: if you don’t care about accuracy or relevance and just using this to impress your PR client or satisfy your curiosity “go free†or “cheap†based on what the visualization pleases you. On the more expensive side, I have spoken to many brands who use the more expensive solutions some are abandoning them for lack of relevance and some have given up because it takes so long to implement and get it right – after all you have to think of every possible variation your brand can be described and every possible attribute people can use to set the system up and then as one user put it – it becomes like drinking from a fire hose!
I will not use your blog as a PR platform (so no company name), but all of the above issues we have solved. Our technology with four pending patents is not based on search but reverse analytics (kind of reverse of an OLAP) – we can discover what is not obvious – no need for search terms, etc. Also, we have a fundamentally new approach to NLP; we can scale, as we can process up to 70 times faster than any other technology out there (big claim!) and produce results that are on the scale of magnitude over +40% more accurate and relevant (another big claim) than all the companies mentioned here and the other hundred plus out there.
Dan, If you are tired of the topic and want to move on to a new post, I understand, if not, please allow me to complete your research and show you how details matter. Tnx.
Sid
We are currently functioning as an agency. But we will soon be releasing a consumer version of our software that will allow companies to self-serve.
Cari
Buzz.io
Don't believe it? Take a look at who commented! Try to find just one CMO who thinks these things valuable.
also valuable solutions with a more European focus
(Synthesio, RTGI or Attentio to mention just a few ones).
always good to find things like this when you're ceo of one of the companies spending so much time and effort working on a solution in this space (even if we weren't mentioned! :( )
it's an interesting question to pose - whether these and similar services are worth paying for. . The problem that is trying to be solved is intuitively a big and important one. But it is difficult to define. "Managing reputation" isn't it because none of these tools (or our one Brandwatch) do it. Things like conversation tracking and measuring marketing effectiveness are more like it, but that is very hard and imho these tools are close to or on the tipping point of when they might be able to actually do this. Then i think we'll have lots of interesting applications emertging. In the meantime, it's great to have your support (speaking for my competition!)
Happy new year to you all
giles palmer (smarting from the fact www.brandwatch.net wasn't included!)
Was it
1. via their own tools
2. by getting a google alert on their / another's name (that's how i found it although Brandwatch did pick this up for our competitors Brands
3. via increased web traffic / other
It would be an interesting barometer
giles
I received an update on my mobile phone which was translated into voice recognition software which in turn told me that Attentio had not been mentioned in an overly US focussed key blog about reputation tracking and that it should have been :)
Seriously though it came through my twitter stream but I can also see its impact on our Attentio Brand Dashboard right now. Incidentally we have just added an email alert function this week, it would have also sent me an email if the blog post had of been today...
Simon
Excellent comments. You are right on. A company's (or a brand's) reputation cant
be seen as a silo. It is key element of strategy. It is not simply 'good' or
'bad'. It is 'on strategy' on some elements (key messages, value proposition)
and 'off strategy' on others. The emerging challenge is to be able to track and
measure all the aspects of your reputation against the goals (explicit and implict)
you have set. Managing these goals in real-time take co-ordinated and integrated
action across the enterprise. It will involved customer service, brand/product managment,
marketing, public relations, finance, human resources, etc. The management challenges are
just begining to emerge.
Our website is www.kdpaine.com. You can see a
demo (featuring the latest results for the top ten PR agencies) by going to
www.diydashboard.com entering the user name guest and the password kdpaine.
Our prices start at arund $5000 a year for a do-it-yourself version, but a typical
program includes some human assistance so we average around $20K per year
for a typical CGM measurement program that includes Twitter, Newsgroups, Blogs, Online pubilcations, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and Social BOokmarking sites.
at least we can try and maneuver it somewhat with better tools and do damage
control where possible.
Do check it out: http://www.brandwatch.net
I'd like to point out (and now you know that we monitor mentions of our own company as well as our competitors! :) that Collective Intellect also offers Listen and Learn monitoring products that compete with the good folks at Radian6 and BuzzLogic/Visible/Cymfony, respectively.
Keep up the good work.
Dean Westervelt
Social Media Analytics
CI
"US only buzz monitoring companies with no international coverage."
Simon we are not US only, we do multilingual monitoring aswell as English. We also break down by region. Infact I know one recent client who signed up for us evaluated Attentio first and then came to us so I am sure we are doing something right ;-)
Leon
SentimentMetrics.com
details of Radian 6 amnd BuzzLogic, I'd be interested to hear. Last I saw, they
were expensive...!!??
David
An excellent article. There seems to be a large number of tracking tools currently available (30+) and many without significant differentiation.
I have recently been tracking sentiment online using the Brandwatch (http://www.brandwatch.net) tool and have found the tool to be effective in providing automated semantic research. This product was omitted from you list but appears to be very similiar to 'sentiment Metrics'. Are these products in the same 'class' according to your criteria?
I am, however, surprised that there is no mention of Brandwatch here (http://brandwatch.net) as I have found this to be an excellent offering in this space, with a company behind it driven to determine and provide relevant metrics that actually make sense for measuring and improving ROI on marketing and advertising, although the capabilities go much further.
I find it interesting too, that many of the comments are from vendors trying to push their own product further up the ranks and shift product rather than help answer the ultimate questions of what is it that I am actually measuring...
Without some idea of the conversations/mentions, their source and their nature (ie sentiment) then it is a hard task to set an engagement strategy to do anything with that wealth of conversation. All these tools are only a step towards providing some clarity and insight to activity that THEN enables an intervention or measurement strategy to be set. Used correctly, the output can feed directly into the entire business strategy resulting in not just sentiment checking and buzz, but new product development and relevant, cost-effective advertising strategy.
Otherwise they are just pretty graphs that can be used to cheer up your board of directors or justify your job.
I would be interested to hear your take on the Brandwatch product in comparison to those above, Dan.
I am, however, surprised that there is no mention of Brandwatch here (http://brandwatch.net) as I have found this to be an excellent offering in this space, with a company behind it driven to determine and provide relevant metrics that actually make sense for measuring and improving ROI on marketing and advertising, although the capabilities go much further.
I find it interesting too, that many of the comments are from vendors trying to push their own product further up the ranks and shift product rather than help answer the ultimate questions of what is it that I am actually measuring...
Without some idea of the conversations/mentions, their source and their nature (ie sentiment) then it is a hard task to set an engagement strategy to do anything with that wealth of conversation. All these tools are only a step towards providing some clarity and insight to activity that THEN enables an intervention or measurement strategy to be set. Used correctly, the output can feed directly into the entire business strategy resulting in not just sentiment checking and buzz, but new product development and relevant, cost-effective advertising and brand deployment strategy.
Otherwise they are just pretty graphs that can be used to cheer up your board of directors or justify your job.
I would be interested to hear your take on the Brandwatch product in comparison to those above, Dan.
points have been made thus far concerning the list, and my reasons for chiming in are twofold. The
first is to clarify a comment regarding the effectiveness of ORM tools to manage reputations - a
point which does not reflect our commitment to our clients and the ORM space as a whole. The
second is to encourage visitors of this blog who are evaluating ORM vendors to consider adding us to
their review list.
RepuMetrix has been assisting the leading
companies and their brands since 2005. This space has since blossomed into an industry/enterprise,
and while we consider ourselves fortunate to have been in the lobby to witness its rise, we haven't
been sitting idle. On the contrary, our platform of Reputation Measurementâ„¢ products and services
have evolved over the years to deliver on the task of safeguarding online brands and reputation
with the timely retrieval and capture of relevant online discussion.
All our tiers of service combine machine analysis with human review to deliver precision ORM, with
features that include online dashboards, real-time monitoring, metric, trending and translation in
over 30 languages, smart filtering (which means malware, splog and adware-free ORM), risk
interpretation, and a depth of sourcing that is second to none. A depth of sourcing so exhaustive that our Adhoundâ„¢ finds itself playing a key role in diligently monitoring online classifieds, to ensure an <a href="http://repumetrix.com/blog/index.php?
blog=3&title=be_ad_keen_reputation_monitoring_part_3&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1">ORM monitoring scope and strategy which is inclusive of online auctions, newspaper classifieds, and newly emerging online marketplace sites.
Our business philosophy continues to be built on the notion of providing leading online monitoring
systems, and as many have already pointed out, this also means reserving some recognition that our
greatest competitive advantage is found in our approach to not only providing best-of-breed
technology, but must also be reflected in our approach to pricing.
To this end, and in the interest of abating the concerns raised here concerning pricing
disparities, RepuMetrix continues to offer a fixed pricing structure with its formula of delivering
the best of class online monitoring tools in their category. Our latest offering RepuTrackâ„¢ continues this commitment, and we
would encourage those interested in witnessing what we can do first-hand to contact us, or to
schedule an online demonstration.
Thanks!
Joseph
need to manage User Generated Content (UGC) at the point of sale.
Most businesses have either a product or service they provide, and in some method by
which it can be bought online. UGC can now be found on almost every major
online retail site - for example, browse products at www.target.com. For a
more industry-specific example, check out your favorite hotel on
any of the major online travel sites (i.e. Expedia, TripAdvisor, Hotels.com).
Consumer Reviews on sites such as these will impact buying decisions at the
point of sale. Blog searches (and variations) do not include content from
retail sites.
The Hospitality Industry does have some tools designed for this purpose, such
as ReviewAnalyst (www.reviewanalyst.com), however is anyone aware of a program
designed to monitor product reviews on retail sites, Amazon, etc.? I was
recently shopping LCD tv's on Amazon, and the product I selected took a very
long time to load when I clicked for more information. I suspect this might
have been related to the 581 reviews attached to it!
I would be very curious to hear about a product that can do this sort of thing.
Kelkoo and many others. For example, we currently monitor hotel reviews for a
worldwide hospitality company and provide them with a global dashboard
+ drill-down on details up to the hotel level.
Amazon is a particular case and we found that monitoring
it as a whole makes little sense, but for particular products (laptops, etc.),
it can be easily included in our scope.
Hope this answers your questions.
and it is an
excellent tool for
uncovering all that
is being said about
you / your company
online. The harder
part though is
developing a
response plan to
what is said about
your company on the
web which is what my
company and I
consult on.
track, there are two ways to do it: one is to search the
entire network as search engines do, the other is to select
wich sites (or type of sites, ex. "blogs", "review
sites", "journals") you want to track. This is giveing us
great results when we analise and compare the influence of
each source/site. This allows you to focus your online
efforts first on the most influencial sites.
SocialTrending
(comment 102) and
everyone else here
who talked about
their Radian6
experience - thank
you. It was very
kind of you to share
it.
Leon
SentimentMetrics.com
Frank raises an interesting point - whether the comparison of client and competitors is meaningful.
I've seen many companies put a lot of effort into developing their own tracking, then add in some competitor names and call it a day.
Well, when you look at the resulting graphs and reports of course it looks like the client demolished their competition. Makes for happy PR people but not a lot of value.
I think this is another important distinction in the market. Some companies need help developing search strings, determining which metrics to use and managing the results. Others have a team of people to do that and just need the darn software, thankyouverymuch.
Besides the feature variation in the actual platforms listed, companies should consider what level of consulting/service fits their needs.
We had one memorable incident with a client where their communications person (and lead for a major account) just up and left the company. When they sat down to apprise the client of the changes in account lead, they asked what happened to all the brand and reputation tracking they had been shown up until that point, prompting a very nervous call from our agency client. In few words, they were ecstatic to hear that the campaign monitoring had not walked out the door, and was accessible by establishing a new account holder.
This is the company Web site: www.spiral16.com
I would totally recommend Radian 6.
And thank you so much for choosing to work with Radian6. We appreciate it.
Cheers.
David
In this context, Forrester identified "Biz360 is a strong performer with an innovative product offering — Opinion Insights" and a "solid offering characterized by balanced data coverage, strong reporting tools, and cross media coverage."
For the record, Biz360 monitors and measures social and traditional media on behalf of a wide range of global 2000 clients such as Allstate, Nortel, Shell, AAA and Verizon among others. Our solution is built on a proprietary technology platform which aggregates, measures and analyzes information across a global network of content sources. We employ current data mining, statistical modeling and text analysis techniques such as NLP to assess the nature, impact and tone of consumer generated conversations, news articles and product reviews/ opinions. Clients have access to a variety of relevant tools and metrics designed to yield actionable insights in flexible formats.
Our three solutions, Community Insights (75 MM CGM sources including blogs, message boards/forums, social networks and microblogs), Media Insights (50K+ traditional print, broadcast and online news media) and Opinion Insights (10K online consumer and expert product review sources) work together and separately to enable our clients to analyze the broadest set of content that influences the perception of their brands. We believe that different types of communication have different influence and it is important to be able to “connect the dots” by examining the influence of each. I invite you to contact me directly to learn more about our company and the solutions we offer.
Visible Technologies very possibly offers the most amazing reputation management tool available to the public. I'm disappointed that a screen shot wasn't provided to showcase their expensive awesomeness.
Now to choose the one that is best for out company.
Josie
@platform45
Now to choose the one that is best for out company.
Josie
@platform45
thanks!
thanks!
www.contentunltd.com