#mkm815

I just wanted to take a moment and thank all of you MKMers for your friendship over the last year. My life has been blessed for knowing you. You are all wonderful, special and unique, and I've been made a better person just by knowing y'awl. You've made my year unforgettable. And I don't think I'll ever forget the time we spent together. Everybody expects from their family because they are the people sent by God for us. However, it’s very difficult to find people outside family from whom you can expect and I am one lucky person that I found love, care, happiness and joy in y'awl, almost forgot that I am millions of miles away from home. 

Anyways, the end of our semester doesn't mean the end of our friendships. I hope that I get to see all of you around and about. Doesn't matter how many miles keep us apart. I'll always be there for you. You are a great group and I want to thank so many of you for all of the kind words and support that you have extended to me over throughout the semester. It meant more than you can know. I wish you all the best for you in your future endeavors! Please stay in touch!

Business’ are finding it increasingly important to incorporate the opinions of the social media community into their daily operations. The ability to truly track trends and competition, and effectively analyze them has finally come to fruition through a variety of social media management tools. Brands, and individuals alike, can find use in these tools by monitoring what’s being said about them on everything from blogs to videos. Monitoring has become a key figment in any business’ operations, as the ideas and opinions that are being discussed in the social media space are a true reflection of the feelings a customer, client or peer has toward a user.

Google Alerts: IT’S FREE!

This free tool provides automatic updates to users when there are new results for their desired search terms, topics or names on any Google platform, ranging from news to blogs to video. Google Alerts provides the user with the ability to choose from options on the frequency that alerts are delivered as well as the fashion for which they are notified. This is a very good option for individuals to consider, especially since it comes as a free service, as it ranges from the formal structures of a business to the informal following of the Kim Kardashian types.

In my own personal experiences with Google Alerts, I went for more of the informal route just to try things out. Advisements and instructions as to the depths of specific information were provided, with the more specific the search terms generating the more relevant results. I currently am receiving updates on the Toronto Maple Leafs, since for some strange reason they are relevant at this time of year.

Sprout Social:

Pricing:

Standard Plan: $39/mo with FREE 30 day trial

Delux Plan: $59 / Month

Premium Plan: $99 / Month

Sprout Social, another social media manager, is a tool that connects a users social media platforms in one place, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Gowalla and Google Analytics. It monitors discussion on the web, allows for a connection with customers and tracks the effectiveness of social initiatives. In analyzing these initiatives, it creates easy to read charts and graphs that are advertised to impress clients. Sprout Social utilizes an enhanced customer service to set itself apart from the other tools.

Purchasers of the number of Sprout Social options can expect to get a highly qualified tool in the way of CRM. The single stream features of the Sprout Social inbox has been designed to ensure responses to any customer conversations and inquiries. Features have also been in place to transmit scheduled content from any of its major media platforms. In order to track its CRM efficiency, the tool provides an engagement feature, the response rate metric, which attempts to measure the real-time impact of the user’s responses, in order to develop insights as to how the brand measures up against competitors of similar circumstances.

Mention

Available as a free plan, a Pro Plan for $20/mo, and a Team Plan for 100/mo. Mention provides its clients with a number of similar features as its competition, but also utilizes a no noise feature which allows its clients the privilege of filtering out the spam and homonyms which may cause mentions of you or your company. Along with its analysis tools, users are able to use Mention on all types of devices, including mobile. Mention is also able to make the user aware of the most important mentions on the basis of influence, authority and previous interactions. In my research of the social media management tools available, Mention’s paid plans are very cost-effective in comparison to its competition and are far more comprehensive, and therefore more effective in management of a large company’s social presence.

Social Mention

This free, real-time social media management tool is exactly that; social media only. Although, it is a very thorough tool in that aspect. Social Mention monitors over 100+ social media properties, giving users a full landscape of what exactly is being said over the wide-ranging social media stratosphere. Like the above tools, it provides analysis tools and daily alerts. Of particular note, Social Mention measures a metric which they call “sentiment”. Sentiment is a calculation which gives the user an indication of how their company, or them individually, is being discussed by comparing the positive mentions in comparison to neutral and negative mentions. As a free tool, this can be very useful for both individual and company alike, as it involves such a wide variety of social media forums.

Viralheat 

Pricing:

Personal: Free trial for 30 days available

Pro: $9.99/ month

Premium: $99.9/ month

Free trial for 30 days available

Viralheat begin its operations in 2009 and was just a viral video analytical tool. However as social media expanded viral heat became equipped with platform monitoring capabilities and today is serving 12,000 clients in 72 countries.

Viralheat offers its services in 9 main domains to help its clients better monitor, track and optimize their social web presence. The main features of Viralheat are: Monitoring social platforms such as twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, Websites and Blogs. It tracks mentions by keywords and phrases specific brand FB pages, boards on Pinterest and trending topics related to brands, listening and taping into real-time conversations about a brand.

It provides social media management of all social media platforms on one unified dashboard; it also provides brands and companies to manage conversation and workflow with in a company. It also allows for social publishing which enables businesses and brands to schedule their posts, publish rich media and archive publishing history. By its social media analysis feature Viralheat tracks the true essence of ROI using 600 media points to measure social web activity, optimize a brand’s strategy and helps better understand trends and insights. Viralheat provides companies and brands the opportunity to build relationships with existing and potential customers by engaging them in social conversations using its social engagement tool.

Viralheat sentiment analysis tool allows businesses/ companies and brands to assess the sentiments of their mentions in the social media space. If a brand mentions have a negative sentiment then the brand can correct the cause of those negative sentiments. Similarly by using Viralheat it is very easy to find out about a company’s and brand’s influencers as well as about individuals who are detracting. It enables a brand or company to direct their message to these influences to make them brand ambassadors and keep a positive word of mouse to increase ROI.

Sales force marketing cloud / Radian6:

Pricing:

Agency pricing, 30-day commitment:

$950/month: 1 million mentions, 500 users

            Brands, 1-year commitments

$600/month: 1 topic profile, 10,000 mentions

$1,800/month: 4 topic profiles, 100,000 mentions

$4,100/month: 10 topic profiles, 250,000 mentions

$10,000/month: 20 topic profiles, 2.5 million mentions

  Sales force marketing cloud is specifically designed software that enables better marketing solutions and functions. Similar to other monitoring tools it also has the ability to publish content with pre-planned schedules using a dashboard. Sales force marketing cloud is very unique as it analyzes data from over 400 million social sources and generates authentic insights for clients. Professional services are also offered to better understand insights and analytical tools. It helps to generate leads for clients to better manage

Trackur

Pricing: Begins with a 10 Day FREE trial to allow the customer to familiarize with the depths of the products. After expiration, users must upgrade to:

Basic - $27/mo, Plus - $97/mo, Premium $197/mo or Ultimate $447/mo

Again, the basis of Trackur is to monitor the reputation and presence of a company or brand within the social media space, and provide analysis of trends and mentions. The Tracker Insights provides the user with knowledge and content regarding the format the brand is being discussed in, and whether it is positive or negative. They also offer to narrow the scope with Sentiment and Influence analysis tools that are intent on gauging exactly who is taking part in conversations about the brand. The guarentee that Trackur claims to have you up and running in less than a minute is an important one. When clients approach this type of tool, chances are that they are looking for some sort of immediate information about a particular situation. Trackur does a good job in a market with many similar tools of exemplifying the use of gaining direct and almost instant feedback.

Sysomos

Pricing:

Unavailable online

Sysomos consists of two product offerings: Media Analysis Platform and Heartbeat, which both analyzes the conversations regarding your brand, industry or product. Whereas Heartbeat offers a real-time analysis of conversations that are happening on the search criteria, MAP offers a database with information that has been archived, analyzed and provide insight into the who, what, where, when and why. Who the influencers are? What they were discussing? Where are they located? When it occurred, and the reasons why? This provides valuable information for brands to learn from either their own history or from others and sees what was most effective. Heartbeat, on the other hand, allows the brand to actively engage audiences by providing one single platform to publish conveniently. Measurements can be seen in real-time.

The Best Tool For Business Monitoring

The best of these tools, for a business, would certainly depend on a number of different factors. Firstly, the business objective would have to be defined, secondly, what is the size of the company and competition within the market, and thirdly, what are the resources at hand. Many of the options offered what seemed like largely the same features, with idiosyncrasies that made each their own. For larger companies who need to take swift response to conversations in the social landscape, and ones that are very conscious of the virtual word of mouth of their products or services, I would suggest the use of Sysomos. For smaller companies with less mentions, and those who really just need to monitor the social conversation, I believe ViralHeat would be sufficient. Companies with extensive resources for social media, including time and monetary funds, I would suggest incorporating the benefits of a few different options from above. The power of social media is growing with each passing day, and the conversations are constant. A brand, whether personal or commercial, simply cannot afford to ignore them. 

Reputation Management for Students

Due to the increasing influence of social media and the multiple platforms and tracking devices, it is important to understand the power social platforms have and the ability for that power to backfire at any given moment. Originally, social media platforms such as Facebook were used to display personal feelings, engage with your friends and bring old friends together. Since, things have been changing as the business world and marketers began utilizing the content received within social media as leverage, assisting with brand image, demographic studies and advertising. Businesses are also using social media as a tool to look inside the life of potential or current employee which create as well as ends many opportunities.

Here are a few key points that are important for students use in order to have control amidst the powerful social media world and manage their reputation:

Privacy is important. Make sure your Facebook profile is set to the highest privacy setting so only the people you want to see your content have the ability to. Due to Facebook’s constantly updating features, make sure you revisit your privacy settings periodically. Everything you add to your social footprint represents your “personal brand.” Keeping this in mind will avoid embarrassing situations for arising and spiraling out of your control. If you look at your profile and notice inappropriate pictures, videos or comments, take it down and start fresh… hopefully it’s not too late.

  Don't look guilty by association. Avoid putting yourself in bad situations that could jeopardize your image. Hanging out with people who take embarrassing pictures at parties and showcase you in a negative light. If someone tags you in an inappropriate photo and you don’t un-tag it in time, your online image could be tainted. Have fun, but don’t be stupid about it.

  Avoid over-sharing. Don't say anything you wouldn't normally share with a prospective employer. It’s important to remain neutral to avoid offending people. Any strong thoughts especially about religion or politics that lean one way over another could potentially rub somebody the wrong way and smear your online reputation.

  Share Positive content that you’re passionate about and could help build your personal brand. Ensure it’s something that you would like your name to be associated with. Perhaps it’s a brand you’ve been following that you’re a huge fan of, or a designer you want to promote. Your passion will come across in the blog posts or Pinterest boards and may lead to connections in the field/industry you are interested in.   

  As long as you remember the content featured about you online may be seen by people who don’t know you and will judge you strictly on content, you are on your way to managing your reputation. Reputation management can be responsibly maintained by avoiding touchy subject matter, un-tagging inappropriate photos, avoiding compromising situations and leading a responsible lifestyle. The best way to appear employable is to be employable. Content added online should reflect your personal brand and should be easily accessible through personal websites, blogs, LinkedIn and other forms of public social media. A good thing to do to monitor your social footprint is try googling your name because this is what employers will see if they attempt to look you up. Ensure they are impressed with what they see by maintaining continuous reputation management.    

    "Protect Your Online Reputation From Negative Search Results..." Reputationcom UK. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.

"My Student." Reputation911com. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2013.

Google Alerts

According to Wikipedia, Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service. It offered by the search engine company Google, that automatically notifies users when new content from news, web, blogs, video and / discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user and stored by the Google Alerts service.  It is FREE application that allows you to monitor anything on the web. For example, people use Google Alerts to find out what is being said about their company or product; monitor a developing new story; keep up to date on a competitor or industry; get the latest news on a celebrity or sport team; find out what is being said about themselves.  After you visiting the Google Alerts, you need to enter your query first, and then enter your email address; at last, confirm the alert you have created.  Google Alert allows users’ results to appear on their RSS feed and also allow them to filter results out of the search for which they have little interest.

Pricing Plans:

Free

Sprout Social

The platform have more all-sided online dashboard than Google Alerts.  One thing that makes this platform attractive is the price. There is option with 30 days free professional account or business account.  They are $9 for pro account and $49 for business account. With sprout social, it will ease your work by a ton as it automatically creates a beautiful and colorful report with your company logo.  It also has conversation history. With the function, the company will be able to check past conversation with the customers.  It has a feature that all social management tools has – search function, which you can search based on location or country. Last but not least, you can customize what you want to show in your inbox such as mentions.  However, it has some negative aspect. For example, certain features are slow; influencer user search are missing; no Facebook search and no mobile app to hootsuite for business.

Pricing Plans:

Standard Plan: $39 / Month

Delux Plan: $59 / Month

Premium Plan: $99 / Month

Free trial for 30 days available

Mention

Mention can help to track any updates from news site and web pages. It has comprehensive dashboard, which allow users to sort online mentions. While clearly a crowed space, mention is somewhat different in that it is targeting individual users and small business. The business model is a freemium offering, with a certain number of “mention” free per month, then low rated ranging from $5-$9/ month for additional tracking. Mention does not offer analytics-filled dashboard, historical tracking data, details on key influencers, or integration with in-house systems. Instead , it merely provides a simple app for tracking what is being said about you, your business, or any other keyword you may want to follow.

Pricing Plans:

Free Plan

Pro Plan: $19.99

Team Plan: $99.95 

Free trial for 30 days available

SocialMention

The function is very similar with Google Alerts that is a free and easy to use.  It is  a social media serach and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content form across that universe in to a single stream of information.  It allows you easy to track and measure what people are saying about you, your company. It monitors 100+social media properties directly including ”twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

 Price: Free

Viralheat

 When this platform comes to social media management and marketing suites, most people think hootsuite and move on, but there are quite a few smaller competitors that via for a piece of this market too. Viralheat ,just launch its redesigned service with a new analytics to make managing multiple account, accessing analytics and engaging with their audience easier for social media managers. It is currently being used by about 12000 brands that subscribe to its plans, which range from free to $99 per month. The service‘s new smart stream is the cornerstone of the redesign. The service supports all the major social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube.

 Pricing Plans:

Personal: Free

Pro: $9.99/ month

Premium: $99.9/ month

Free trial for 30 days available

Trackur

This platform is a social media monitoring tool designed to assist companies and PR prefessionals in tracking what is said about brands on the interest. It scans hundreds of millions of web pages- including new, blogs, video, images, and forums, and alerts the user to anything that matches the key words monitored. When you enter a keywork in Trackur’s search system, the service will look for mentions in both mainstream and social media, tweets, video, images, tags and so on. You can get good overview of where that keyword, which would generally be a company, brand or product name and has been mentioned along with some graphs tracking such mentions over time. You also can save a search, which means Trackur will rum it automatically every 30 mins and notify you of new mentions across all of the media it tracks.

Pricing Plans:

Basic: $27 / month

Plus: $97 / month

Premium: $197 / month

Ultimate: $447 / month

Free trial for 10 days available

Radian 6

Radian 6 Technologies, Inc. provides social media monitoring and analysis solution for marketing, communications, relations and customer support professionals. Its automated solution enables to monitor and analyze various social media tools, such as blogs, forums, wikis, and microblogging services to allow users to track real time conversations regarding their product and brand.

Pricing Plans:

Contact Manager: $5 / month

Group: $25 / month

Professional: $65 / month

Comparison

Before companies deciding whether using these platform, it must think about the cost. The differentiated price depend on its level of detail associated with and its interface. For the companies, it must position your figure out the size and scope of the company, and then decide which platform the companies want to choose. sometimes, the employees would be involved in monitoring there platforms, which would depend on size of the companies. If employees take time to monitor the platforms, they have to be paid. therefore, it is important for companies to evaluate what these platforms bring to companies.

Benefit of Monitoring these platforms 

there are many benefits to monitor these social media for companies. I just list some important ones. first of all,  Monitoring mentions of your brand through various social media channels can be beneficial for all business. if you know whenever your brand or company is mentioned you can respond appropriately. By using social media monitoring tools you can to manage your brand across a number of different platforms. Secondly, it can keep up to date with industry trends. thirdly, you can monitor your competitors so that you have a great way to stay ahead. Last but not least, it can affect your customer service channel. As soon as someone mentions a problem with your service, product or brand, you can respond instantly. Though it is never good for a customer to experience problems with your products or services; by providing quick, effective customer support you can often create a very positive impression.

Work cited

Aaron,  “My honest and unbiased review of Sprout Social” ASK AARON LEE, August, 2012, http://askaaronlee.com/review-sprout-social/

Sarah Perez  “Like vanity searches? Mention launches social media monitoring for the rest of us” Techcrush.com .  March, 21st, 2012  http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/21/like-vanity-searches-mention-launches-social-media-monitoring-for-the-rest-of-us/

Frederic Lardinois , “Social Media Marketing Suite Viralheat Redesigns, Adds New Analytics Dashboard, Targeted Publishing And Smart Stream” , techcruch.com, February 5th, 2013, http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/05/viralheat-redesigns-with-new-analytics-dashboard-targeted-publishing/

Robin Wauters, “ Trackur lauches free version of its social media monitoring tool, TECHCRUNCH.COM, Feb 10th, 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/25/trackur/

CrunchBase, 2013,http://www.crunchbase.com/company/radian-6

Nowadays students use social media to post everything and anything, from posting pictures of themselves, sharing information about what they’re currently doing, their thoughts and beliefs, the location they are currently at, and the list could go on. The internet is a growing farm with new information added every second of the day and online users have the opportunity to view your content.

As students, we research prospective companies we apply to in order to determine an understanding about their company culture. From this we judge whether or not we could see ourselves working for that particular business. I know from my experience I will search personnel from the business I am applying to and get an understanding of the type of people I will be speaking to during my interview. This is an excellent way to determine if there are any similarities between the interviewer and yourself. The more the interviewer can relate with you, the greater the chance of progressing through the interview process.

Since it is fairly simple to search for company personnel, it is that much easier for these individuals to investigate who we are. Employers will search your name before they even read your resume to obtain a clear view of your digital behavior.  This immediate judgment can literally make or break the possibility of acquiring an interview with any potential employer. The most important rule to follow, if you care about your online reputation, is to think before you post. A simple post complaining about a company can get back to you years down the road, if applying to their company. Why would a company hire an individual who has created a negative assessment about their establishment? Never forget that your online reputation matters since your audience is astronomical.

5 key notes on how to improve your online reputation and digital reach:

1.       Set Your Own Reputation – Create your own personal brand, be strong and positive

2.       Stay On Top of Things – Search your name frequently so there are no surprises for individuals viewing your e-reputation

3.       Ensure There Is More Good Than Bad – Post your own information

4.       Secure Everything – Make sure all accounts are secured and don’t reveal all your information

5.       Educate Family and Friends – Monitor your personal brand on social media and remove unnecessary content

  Sources

  In pre-history, before Google and Social media it was a very different scenario when it came to managing a person’s reputation. For this blog however, I will only focus on “Importance of reputation management for students”.

As a student, we all think we are very interesting, unique, charming, aspiring, individualistic, and all in all James bond from our life’s 007 flicks. We are sure that we are the best prospect for the employer who will hire us to do the job. But wait! Are we sure that our reputation on social media makes us James Bond and not Gold finger?

I would like to mention a proverb here; “A man is known by the company he keeps” and with advent of Google and Social Media this proverb has taken an interesting turn as these platforms not only provide the details of the man but details of the company he keeps as well with only a few words through a keyboard.

In general it has become a common practice for employers to check a prospect’s online presence before even calling them for an interview; however it is even more in practice to search about the students who have freshly graduated and applied. The reason being students mostly do not have any fulltime job experiences or references in the industry, so it is very important for an employer to find answers to a few important questions, such as; “whether they will bring  hangover to work on Monday or not?”

No, I am not asking you to stop having a good time but to manage your social accounts properly, organizing your professional platforms such as “linkedin” with content related to your career goals, aspirations, information and professional picture or pictures.  Similarly your personal platforms such as “Facebook” should have proper privacy settings so no person other than your friends could see your content.

The type of content you share on your professional sites and personal sites should be totally different and the only exception is your twitter account where you should be a little more care full about the content as this platform serve’s both personal and professional purposes.

Reputation management is very important especially for students and it is important to find out what your reputation is by searching yourself on search engines and try to see what people see when they search you.

Google Alerts – is a BETA service where users receive an email or RSS alert when the search engine catalogueS new material associated to a specific keyword. Google Alerts notifies users when new content from news, web blogs, video, and discussion groups match a set of search terms selected by the user.  For businesses, this would be a good starting point to address customer service issues since you can set up alerts about your company’s name, URL, and key products. When your company is mentioned in a blog Google will send a link and employees can view what is being said and respond to it.

  Price: Free

Sprout Social – social media management monitoring console that integrates with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networks that are considered as a control centre. A great was to manage your social media no matter where you are.

Price: 30 day free trial $39 per user/month, $59 per user/month, $99 per user/month

Mention – provides media and social monitoring (manage social networks, news sites, forums, blogs, or any web page), anti-noise technology (reduce spam), team work (assign tasks, share alerts), live alerts (real-time alerts via email and push notifications), all devices (access anywhere from webapp’s, pc’s, and mobile app’s), smart action (react to mentions positively, through retweets and sharing), priority mentions (set criteria for most important mentions), and statistics and data expert tools (receive an overview of your mentions by source, language and generate reports to analyze).

Price: Free/ month, $19.99/ month, $99.95/ month

Social Mention – real-time social media search and analysis.  Receive daily email alerts about your company, marketing campaign, competitor, news story, or celebrity.

Price: Free

ViralHeat – an integrated suite for social media monitoring. monitor (social conversation on the web), manage (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn), analyze (develop insights for ROI from in-depth analytics), engage (interact with your audience over multiple networks from 1 place), influencers (identify advocates for your company, competitors online), leads (recognize your audience and engage them at time of purchase), publish (place rich media content to multiple social networks), sentiment (view and analyze sentiment across different platforms), and reports (view social media reports and understand your ROI).

Price: Free, $9.99/month, $99.99/month

Trackur – provides all social media monitoring tools and measurements in 60 seconds. Social measurement (quickly monitor online reputation, measure social media, and analyze social media mentions about your company, brands, or customers), affordable plans (offers free social media monitoring plans to get you started and then give you the option to upgrade, no contracts), and fully brandable (with the ultimate plan you can white label your social media; your brand, your logo, your colors, and your domain name).

Price: $27/month, $97/month, $197/month, $447/month

Radian 6 – social media monitoring tools, social media engagement software, and social marketing analytics. Social listening (listens to conversations on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, forums, blogs, mainstream news, LinkedIn, image sites, and adding new sources frequently), social content (get your messaging in front of diverse audiences, growing your pool of prospects), engagement (Streamline conversations by bringing all of your social networks into one easy-to-manage dashboard), social ads (reach your desired market with targeted localized campaigns), workflow and automation (automation engine analyzes all posts containing your keywords, and then takes the desired action), and measurement (receive real-time analytics).

Price: $600/month

Sysomos - Social Media Analytics for real-time intelligence to manage products, brands and corporate reputations. Word of Mouth Marketers (engage and identify key influencers to establish and build relationships, and create buzz), Marketers / Advertisers (obtain insight about your target audience, sentiment and geo-demographics), Corporations (contribute to conversations about your products and your brands), and API/Data Partners (contribute to conversations happening within the social media realm about your products and brands)

Price: $500/month

I believe Sysomos would work best for businesses because of its powerful features, functions, and tools. They have received awards for being the best social media monitoring application on the market today.

  Sources

  Chaney, Paul. ``5 Timesaving Social Networking Tools.`` Practical ecommerce Insights for Online Merchants. 19 Oct 2010. Web 9 Apr 2013. <http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2323-5-Timesaving-Social-Networking-Tools>

Mention. Web. 9 Apr 2013 <https://en.mention.net/>

Roggio, Armando. ``The PeC Review: Google Alerts Helps With Reputation Management. Practical ecommerce Insights for Online Merchants.``  Practical ecommerce: Insights for Online Merchants. 30 Mar 2009. Web 9 Apr 2013. <http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1033-The-PeC-Review-Google-Alerts-Helps-With-Reputation-Management>

Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Web. 9 Apr 2013. \      <http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/>

Sysomos. Web. 9 Apr 2013 <http://www.sysomos.com/>

Trackur. Web. 9 Apr 2013 <http://www.trackur.com/>

Need to give your business a boost?

Google Alerts, Sprout Social, Mention, SocialMention, ViralHeat, Trackur, Radian 6 and Sysomos are all great options that will help you get there

These tools are all social media trackers, they can be as simple as searching for keywords or in depth brand communication within social media platforms. They range from paid widgets, apps, office tools to free searches, accessing all of the public information on the internet.

To better discuss these programs I have divided them into 3 categories; primary notification services, CRM platforms and full business services.

Primary notification services include, Google Alerts, Mention and Social Mention. These tools search for any mention of your brand name or any keyword across all social media platforms. Google Alerts is an add on to those who have a Google Account. This is another avenue how Google making a one stop shop user experience. Currently Google has connections through Youtube, Chrome browsing, Gmail, Mapquest. Google Alerts is another way that Google makes themselves stand out from other search engines. This notification program is a free extension to those who already have signed up with Google and already have an account. You can set up keywords and receive notifications about them to your email on a constant basis. This would be good for helping maintain a positive social media presence for a small business. Secondly, SocialMention is much like Google Alerts, however, strictly focuses to 100+ social media places. This is also a free widget that allows businesses to watch over communication happening on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube … Doesn’t have many other features then that, but significantly reduces the time it would take for one individual to be on top of all of the communications during a workday. Lastly, Mention is quite a large social media tool considering its reach to deal with 40 different languages. This program is a paid one, from $19 basic to $99 premium allowing for it to be downloaded to a smartphone and keeping everyone within the company in the loop. Is able to decipher the authority behind the message and determine the importance the message has to the company.

CRM platforms include, Sprout Social and Sysomos to aid businesses in maintaining a customer database. By making it an easy environment to add customers to a database, it will facilitate better communication within the firm. Better communication within the firm means better service for each individual customer. Options like help desk, allow for customers to get support right away. Sprout Social is a paid program that not only includes CRM strategies but also has social media monitoring. Goes one step above just satisfying the customer and allows for the business to really hear what they have to say about their services and how they helped. This program runs for $39 basic, $59 premium and $99 deluxe. The free alternative is Sysomos which sticks to mainly CRM with an added feature of an influencer campaign. This neat feature allows for the company to see their social influence because of their added efforts to really understand their customer’s needs.

Lastly we have some companies that focus on giving their social media services to small to large businesses. These programs are ViralHeat, Trackur and Radian 6 which offer either individual products to businesses or offer the full unlimited service. ViralHeat is a great bang for your buck, it monitors every social media platform and produces statistics along with communication outlets to reach out to current/potential customers. It costs either $9 or $99 for absolutely everything. The price difference shows that you either take a few things we have to offer or you take everything. Next we have Trackur, which is big on return on investment. Here, a lot of data is analysed and presented in an insightful manor suggesting different marketing techniques to increase market penetration. Trackur focuses on full brand awareness  with social media monitoring in just 60 seconds. This is by far the most expensive of the social media monitoring tools and completely takes you into the eyes of the consumer. The prices range from 100 -$500, suggesting that it is a large investment but will provide deep insight into purchasing decisions and consumer’s thoughts. Finally, Radian 6 has lists of products such as social listening, social content, social ads and engagement.  What is nice about this developer is that they allow a business to pick from a list of products and select the ones that they would find beneficial for their business. Whether they want to know more about what a consumer things, or focus on workflow and automation, they can decide.