Google alerts allows you to monitor the web based on your search query. Individuals and businesses may use Google alerts for a variety of reasons including; Keeping tabs of an influential business leader, receiving the latest information on a company or monitoring a developing news story. Google alerts allows businesses to see what is being said about their brand, the competition or any other information that could benefit the company. For example, if negative news was released about a company, the company could track what was being said by submitting it into the search query to create the alert and would be informed of the story through the public’s eyes. They could then straighten out the facts by confronting major social influencers, followed by considerable PR efforts to transform rumours to truth. When submitting a search query the following information is required; result type, How often, How many and your email.
Enter a query you want Google to search for
Google Alerts checks regularly for new results concerning your query
Google Alerts sends new results to your email.
Summary: Great for small businesses who require simple tools. The problem is that Google often finds information that’s not as relevant as you’d like if the keywords are too broad. To help cure this a bit, you can use advanced search operators to help you filter out bad results
Time: Time includes creating the queries and checking the results Google Results sends your email. The bulk of the time contains extracting the information resulting from your query word.
Labour Required: The time it takes to analyze the data after the Google alert is submitted takes the most time and effort
Cost: One of the only platforms along with SocialMention that is free to use! Paying minimum wage and up is required to hire social media experts to create Google alters, analyze findings and add content.
Social Mention operates just like Google Alerts, except it deals strictly with Social Media.
How it works, is you Receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, or competitor. Type in your social media source(s) and then select from one of the many search options; All, micro blogs, networks, bookmarks, comments, images, news, audio etc in order to create your social media search. Below your search includes the latest trends to assist with an idea of popular events or topics.
Summary: This social media monitoring tool’s interesting combination of easy-to-read metrics is what sets itself apart from other platforms. They include; reach sentiment, passion, and strength (volume/day). Great for businesses who care strictly about increasing their social media influence.
Time/ labour: This platform probably won’t narrow down the searches as well and will provide more time and effort to go through the junk.
Price: Free to use, businesses would need to hire social media experts to monitor the site though $.
This web application integrates with Twitter, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Gowalla and allows businesses to manage their social presence across channels and allow it to grow by turning social connections into loyal customers.
In addition to communication tools, Sprout Social offers contact management, competitive insight, lead generation, analytics and more all in one innovative and easy to use package.
Sprout Social features include; The ability to shorten links, attach photos, target your audience on Facebook, customize your posts and much more.
Social businesses are given a free thirty day trial to use Sprout Social to see if the holistic view of their company’s performance is what they desire.
The intuitive use of Sprout Social sets it apart from the competition. It’s a simple, effective way to manage your social media efforts. However, every product is never without its short-comings. Google integration and publishing is NOT available on Sprout Social. So, posting to Google+ takes additional effort on the marketer’s part to increase their social media gamut. Sprout Social is not a be-all, end-all social media management system, but it is mant to conduct a good percentage of your efforts. With the reporting, messages, and publishing efforts of the platform, it’s a great tool for social media ROI and engagement.
Price: After thirty days is up, businesses may choose to purchase on of the three options; Standard, Deluxe or Premium. Standard is great for small teas and costs $39.00 per month. It offers an all-in-one social inbox, real-time brand monitoring, advanced publishing features, social CRM tools, comprehensive supporting tools and complimentary training and support. Deluxe, used simply to grow your social presence further is $59.00 / month, manages up to 20 profiles and includes all the standard features including; Complete Publishing & Engagement, Helpdesk Integration, Deluxe Reporting Package and Google Analytics Integration. Finally, Premium costs $99.00/ month, manages up to 50 profiles and is used to most effectively manage a growing social presence. This includes the standard features as well as; Social Care Suite, ViralPost Send Time Optimization, Premium Reporting Package and Custom Branded Interface.
Time: The amount of time spent on social media would be required to improve a businesses social media performance. Sprout Social requires very little time as it analyzes and calculates everything for you.
Labour: Very little labour required except for interpreting the analytics Sprout Social provides.
Mention is an app allowing individuals or businesses to utilize social, creating alerts for your brand, your industry, your company, your name or your competitors and be informed in real-time about any mentions on the web and social web.
Media and Social Monitoring
Monitor millions of sources including; anything published on social networks, news sites, forums, blog or any web page in 42 different languages.
Technology learns from your behaviour and can automatically remove noise such as spam from your inbox.
Share your alerts with any user, become socially active and assign tasks to your team members. You may ask your assigned community manager to reply to a tweet, comment on a blog article and so on.
Reactive real-time email notifications
Can be used on any of the following devices; web app, Chrome app, desktop version for PC, Mac or Linux or mobile version with the iPhone or Android app.
Able to re-tweet a mention, and share directly from your facebook page
Most important mentions are flagged according to the source’s influence, authority and latest interactions you had with them.
Statistics & data Export tool
Creates an overview of your mentions by source, language, time and generates PDF reports or to analyze in your own way.
Price: The free per month plan consists of 3 alerts, 500 mentions per month, and 1 month history. The try it for free for 1 month Pro Plan costs $19.99 per month contains unlimited alters, 50,000 mentions per month, unlimited history, access to your stats, as well as export data tools. Lastly, the Team Plan is $99.95 per month contains all the same features as the Pro Plan, except it allows multiple users may use the same account. Sign up is free.
Time/ Labour: You must analyze data on your own which could be a tedious time consuming task.
ViralHeat is used by over 12,000 businesses and agencies around the world and allows businesses to stay on top of everything by unifying any mention of their company on; Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google plus or Linkedin and manage social media more efficiently and effectively. First, you must create an account and sign in to use the program. The site provides live streams which are customizable via filters to track only the most influential. Honing in to the pulse of the conversation gives busineses the chance to engage when appropriate. You may update all social media accounts on this platform as well as; publish posts, add images, shorten links, schedule posts for future publishing and preview posts all on ViralHeat. Overview analytics provides businesses with daily data that measures the various profiles created within the account.
This program is recommended for businesses interested in creating content to spread news and brand supporting info. Viralheat has an advanced publishing suite making it easy for social media marketers to publish content to social networks, Special features include one’s ability to; upload images, shorten URLs, and schedule messages across multiple social media networks.
Price: Includes three options; personal which is free, Pro- $9.99/ month and Premiere- $99.99/ month.
Time/Labour: Time spent contributing to social media and interpreting results for trends and information concerning the company. An on-going process.
One can quickly view the number of new results, velocity change, share of voice and much more Insights will inform brands about what buzz words are associated with your brand and the image it is being perceived as.
With Trackur, you’re able to easily control of your data through Excel exporting and gather results via RSS/XML feeds or email alerts.
Since every conversation is archived, complete with resources for viewing the original article, sharing with coworkers, or bookmarking for follow-up.
Influence & Sentiment Analysis
Allows you to see who’s behind the conversation and the influence he/she has among the social media community.
Although very similar to most other platforms, Trackur not only gives you the right tools needed to trace traffic going to your business website, but they also give you great advice on how to make your campaigns successful. One factor Trackur does differently from many competitors is they engage with their customers. Whether it is giving advice from their blog, or helping you with campaign details, Trackur makes sure you are happy with the results you get from using their services.
Price: Frustrated that existing online reputation monitoring tools were either too complex or too expensive, Andy decided to create Trackur. His goal was fulfilled with the February 2008 public launch of the industry’s easiest, accurate, and affordable reputation tracking solution.
Time/Labour: Time spent contributing to social media and interpreting results for trends and information concerning the company. An on-going process.
Utilizes all social media platforms into 1 dashboard. First, you pick a set of key words about your company, industry or even competitors; you can search on over 1.5M sources including blogs, Twitter and YouTube. Radian 6 is great because companies can easily sort the data through various options that will provide you with greatest influencer and graphs that display the influence success, or lack of. Clicking on specific peaks in the graph will narrow in to popular topics of the day. Real time customer feedback is like having a customer focus group providing valuable insight that can be utilized for company success.
Summary: For those who manage their presence on the go, there’s one big missing piece of the puzzle. You can’t use Radian6 on a smart phone because there is no app. Another huge problem with Radian6 is that it doesn't actually monitor public comments posted to public Facebook pages. Radian6 looks very comprehensive and has an impressive media type search, but profile costs can add up and it is expensive compared to some other offerings out there. However you pay for what you get and it certainly is one of the premium services
Price: For a boutique marketing agency that work with clients of various sizes and budgets—Radian6 is not the best option. Radian6 is considered more suitable for brands. The price structure is as such: Basic, Professional, Corporate and Enterprise.
Agency pricing, 30-day commitment:
o $950/month: 1 million mentions, 500 users
Brands, 1-year commitments
o $600/month: 1 topic profile, 10,000 mentions
o $1,800/month: 4 topic profiles, 100,000 mentions
o $4,100/month: 10 topic profiles, 250,000 mentions
o $10,000/month: 20 topic profiles, 2.5 million mentions
Time/ Labour: Time spent contributing to social media and interpreting results for trends and information concerning the company. An on-going process.
Similar to all the other sites, The Sysomos platform brings business intelligence to social media, giving you instant and unlimited access to all social media conversations so you can quickly see what's happening, why it's happening, and who's driving the conversations. Heartbeat is a social media monitoring tool from Sysomos. Heartbeat provides valuable insight from around the world, offering information concerning demographics, where geographically the conversations are happening, top influencers as well as text analytics. Heartbeat also covers competitive analysis covering a large variety of metrics.
Summary: Sysomos is different by providing businesses with valuable and useful information such as geo-demographic, key influencers and sentiment. This feature properly answers the 5 W’s: what, when, where, who and why unlike most other platforms.
Time/ Labour: The time it takes to analyze the data after heartbeat uncovers the trends requires the most time and effort
Depending on your specific objective, company size and budget is how a business’ will decide which platform to choose from. The variety listed above offer an array of similar features, but it is important to match what you wish to get out of the platform, with the features each platform will offer you.
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