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Goldbach Interactive’s Social Media Monitoring Tool Report 2012

This post was originally published by Goldbach Interactive in early July 2012. Many thanks to Dominic Stöcklin for allowing us to publish it on this blog.

Social Media Monitoring Tool Report 2012

Social media monitoring is becoming more important than ever before. The tool market has grown exponentially in the last two years and now includes well over two hundred tools. Faced with such a selection, it can be overwhelming to know which tool is best suited to a company’s needs. For this reason, as well as to present the strengths of each tool provider, Goldbach Interactive publishes a yearly report on social media monitoring. In this year’s report, we have created an infographic displaying the most crucial key figures.

Comparing tools in different categories

This year eighteen of the two hundred aforementioned tools are particularly convincing. We were able to compare fifteen of these directly with each other based on the criteria listed below. The remaining three follow a full-service approach and are thus not directly comparable with the others since they tailor the solution specifically to the individual needs of a single client

Categories    Data coverage/ worldwide presence (quality of source coverage, historical data, clients in multiple countries)
•    Setup (services and support, entering search terms)
•    Engagement (social profiles, conversation history, workflow, alert functions)
•    Reporting (e-mail reports, individual dashboards)
•    Additional functions (sentiment, filtering possibilities, mobile access)
•    Design (usability, optics)
•    Price-performance ratio

Tool strengths

International source coverage and simple setup

Where data coverage and worldwide presence are concerned, Brandwatch, Visible Intelligence and SM2 are the tools of choice. The latter offers historical data back to 2007 and a significant worldwide presence (i.e. a solid international client base). Visible Intelligence features a rich range of source coverage and allows access to its entire data set for more than a year.

Meltwater Buzz, Brandwatch and Sysomos Heartbeat are the leading tools for the setup category. Meltwater Buzz has a solid and straightforward setup interface, while at the same time offering a substantial support system. Brandwatch is not only quickly installed, but also impresses us with its fascinating functions for entering search terms (e.g. the command to search for plural). Sysomos Heartbeat stands out as one of the best options because of its extensive setup possibilities and a dual data filtering system (first giving the web a once-over, than filtering the results).

Convincing in Dialogue, Reporting and Design

As for engagement, Radian6 is by far the front-runner with its own engagement console. Engagor is nevertheless impressive with a clearly laid out workflow system of “inbox”, “outbox” and “follow-up” tabs. Moreover, the assigned tasks are already pictured on the dashboard. UberVU offers a great deal of interactive options with the users as well as good workflow functionalities with a tagging system.

Radian6 is again in the lead with reporting, though uberVU, Sysomos Heartbeat and Engagor are all hot on its heels. Radian6’s presentation of data via diverse dashboards leaves nothing to be desired. UberVU and Engagor are also very good in reporting and deliver versatile and individualised solutions. Sysomos Heartbeat once again convinces us of its quality through its multiple alert settings.

Further functions that we researched were sentiment analysis, filtering possibilities, and the adjustment of mobile terminal devices. Yet again we see Radian6 in first place – closely followed by Sysomos Heartbeat, Meltwater Buzz and Brandwatch. Radian6 offers countless data presentation and filtering possibilities. Brandwatch provides sentiment analyses in twenty languages while Sysomos Heartbeat offers the opportunity to create an individual filter and save it on the dashboard.

With regard to design, Engagor and uberVU are particularly impressive due to their intuitive management, user friendliness and remarkable celerity. Sysomos Heartbeat sets itself apart with a tidy interface and clearly laid out data. Brandwatch wins us over by its diverse adjustment techniques that are available for the presentation of data on each tab of the tool.

A Good Price-Performance Relationship

ComMonitor (Netbreeze) and Viralheat offer the best price-performance ratios. Understandably, these particular tools have fewer functions than more expensive ones. However, for the respective cost they offer very good solutions.  Sysomos Heartbeat features a large number of search terms, making it one of the best price-performance ratios in a higher price range.

Certain tool providers granted us the opportunity to appraise their functions more fully and afforded us a demo account with its own searches/queries. In this way, we were able to directly compare the tools and analyse the collected data.  Sysomos Heartbeat and Radian6 trumped the other tools. They also had the largest number of results for German, French and English searches. Even when filtering by country (Germany England, Japan, Thailand, China), both of these tools faired much better, i.e. produced better results, than the rest of the providers.

Full-Service Approach

In addition to the fifteen tools that we analysed via various categories, there are some convincing full-service tools on the market. These solutions set store by setup, customer needs and support.  When one is faced with exceptionally complex demands, these are the tools that best fit the bill. The unique nature of the tools does of course mean that there also will be a bigger bill.

Of the three tools mentioned here, Synthesio is the one that impressed us the most. It offers the most interesting possibilities through its personal support system and categorisation of collected data. Cogia Intellectis a keeper because of its independently programmed search algorithms. Gridmaster shows its strength in the quality of the findings.

Conclusion

From this report we gain two insights: one for the companies or organisations that would like to implement a monitoring tool and the other for Goldbach Interactive as a social media competence centre.

Before a company or organisation decides on a monitoring tool, it is of utmost importance to ascertain whether or not the tool provider already has a client base in the respective country or at least within the corresponding language area. This is a reliable index for sufficient source coverage. When choosing the tools themselves, the requirements, capabilities and various functions should be taken into consideration. The categories we have presented here can be weighted in order to identify the most meaningful tools in each of the categories. After the choice has been made, one only has to thoroughly test the chosen tool.

The lesson Goldbach Interactive takes with from this report is that the social media monitoring market is currently offering a greater diversity of tools than ever before. The fact that the tools reflect varying strengths across the board prevents us from declaring a clear ranking of tools. This point not withstanding, some tools dominate regardless of which category we look at: Radian6, Sysomos Heartbeat, Brandwatch, Engagor or Meltwater Buzz. “Monitoring tool” is becoming a bit of a misnomer for most providers, since they are offering more and more functions that go above and beyond monitoring alone.  The tools are developing in the direction of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and are thereby partially facilitating the integration of existing CRM systems. Furthermore, these tool providers are offering ever better engagement and deliver increasingly diverse insights via reporting and analytic functions. It is worth noting, however, that not a single tool manages all functions perfectly.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions, queries or suggestions regarding the report – or even leave a comment on our blog!

We would like to sincerely thank the tool providers for their collaboration on this project.

Infographic

The following infograhic lists the eighteen best tools in alphabetical order and highlights the varying qualities of the direct comparisons. Do you want to embed our infographic on your website or blog? Just copy the following code!

Note

Though we were not able to work in detail with SoDash because of some missing data, we will take a closer look at it at a later date. Adobe Social is also of interest and will be paid due attention following its next release.


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Meet Yan Luong – Social Media Manager @ RTS

 This interview is part of a series of posts highlighting social media trailblazers in Switzerland.  Our last post in this series, featured Katja Wenk, Web and Social Media Officer at the University of St. Gallen. Today, we meet Yan Luong, Social Media Manager at Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS).

As often social media friendship stories go, I met Yan through Twitter in early 2012. Shortly after his name started popping up everywhere. We followed the same people on Twitter, had some LinkedIn connections in common, and seemed to share a bad habit of tweeting at odd hours.

Many tweets later, Yan and I met in Lausanne in May 2012.  Having a coffee with somebody you’ve met on social media for the first time might sound like an awkward situation. In my experience, it is the absolute opposite. After all, you know what this person cares about (Twitter), laughs at (Facebook & Instagram), and what he/she does for a living (LinkedIn). Over a few coffees, Yan and I compared notes about our jobs, new tools we are intrigued by, who’s who in the world of social media in Switzerland, and what makes social media users in Switzerland tick.

Owner of a good sense of humor and easy disposition, Yan agreed to an improptu video interview in which he talks about his work at RTS, how he manages 55 Facebook pages, and the Swiss’ obsession with the iPhone.

More about Yan Luong.


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Building our Community: One Meeting at a Time

As we all know, communicating online is a fantastic way to keep in touch but no technology will ever replace meeting face to face. On May 16, we met in Zurich to exchange information, challenges, and ideas with other program participants. It was an intense but very productive day, and the perfect opportunity to say hi to familiar faces but also many new ones.

We thank everyone who made the trek out to Zurich and to SWISS for hosting us. In the interest of all program participants, we wanted to share some of the highlights of the meeting as well as the presentations shared that day.

Highlights

Panel discussion with Berner Fachhochschule, EPFL, and University of St.Gallen. I envisioned this panel as a simple discussion, if not a conversation amongst friends, about what works and does not work at each of these schools. I purposely selected three schools that were different in size, budgets, focus, and location to show examples that participants could relate to. The three panelists shared their impressions and even personal experience about managing social media at their institutions. The resulting conclusion: there is not ONE way to implement and run social media. As Andrea Schweizer from BFH advised: “Just do it”.

Upon reflection, I realized that holding such a panel would have been impossible 12 months ago when we first met in Bern, Switzerland. This shows that our community has evolved and matured, seeing each other more as collaborators rather than competitors. Thanks to Andrea Schweizer (BFH), Markus Zinsmaier (HSG), and Michael Mitchell (EPFL) for being so open and generous with their experience.

A video of the panel below. The recording starts 5minutes into the discussion but still captures most of the exchange.

Social Media @ SWISS Air Lines. Christian Lüdi, Chief Learning Officer for SWISS Air Lines, shared his experience managing social media for the airline. What mostly resonated with us was how intense the listening component is. There’s a phrase that still echoes in my head: “Respond to your true fans not slobs.” So often we hear that we need to respond and acknowledge every single comment. However, Christian showed through SWISS’s experience handling the transition to a new logo, that as in the offline world, a lot of people just complain for the sake of it and given the known constraints of time it is imperative that the true fans are not neglected. Responses to difficult people often take a long time to be crafted. Make sure they count. For more, see his presentation below:
XING for Universities. We were really pleased to have Robert Beer, XING’s Country Manager for Switzerland and Austria, present the network and all of its possibilities. We learned a couple of new things. For example, XING is the primary business network for 4 out of 5 Swiss professionals. Check out Slide 17 for an interesting infographic on how XING can generate value for students and how universities can benefit from it.
Concurrent sessions. We held three concurrent sessions in the morning and repeated two of them in the afternoon. The idea was to allow participants to benefit from as many sessions as possible. The sessions focused on the core issues of making the case for social media, monitoring and reporting, as well as content strategy. Find below the presentations for the three sessions. We thank our speakers Kelly Hungerford from Paperli, Ferdinand Kobelt and David Schaefer from SOMEXCLOUD, and Mike Schwede for sharing their knowledge and expertise with us.
1. Making the case for social media in your institution
2. Monitoring and Reporting
3. Content Strategy with Paper.li
Google Switzerland. Last but not least, Michel Benard from Google CH told us briefly how Google works with universities in Switzerland. Did you know that Google Switzerland is the largest engineering office that Google has outside of the U.S.? It has more than 700 employees from over 70 countries. As most tech companies today, Google is keen on finding the best talents and is very active in Switzerland finding and recruiting graduates from top technical universities. Details about research and scholarships opportunities in the presentation below.

In the next few weeks, look out for posts with more information about the meeting, including your feedback, and what’s next with the program.


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Gains on Facebook and the Power of Twitter Reach

We are well into 2012, which means brand new numbers about Swiss academia and their social media presence. Those of you participating in the program have already received the quarterly reports about official and unofficial presence. In this blog post we first present a short overview about official presence during the first quarter of 2012, then give detailed insight into Twitter activity. Many universities and universities of applied sciences set up official Twitter accounts in the past 12 months. We were curious about how much those groups are tweeting and what their potential reach is. Read on to find out.

Official Social Media Presence Q1/2012: EHL Shakes it up on Facebook

The last quarter of 2011 was quite eventful, with three institutions setting up an official Facebook page and four an official Twitter account. The new figures for social media presence don’t reveal any major shifts in the first quarter of 2012. While no new accounts were created, there have certainly been increases in likes, check-ins, and other metrics.

A quick look at Facebook likes on official pages shows that EHL and EPFL are still leading, but EHL has passed EPFL for the first time. Newcomers HSG, UZH, and FHNW, who have set up profiles in the last quarter of 2011, have taken Facebook by storm, doubling their likes or more since we last checked them at the end of 2011. HSG, for example is already tied with UNIBAS, who joined Facebook in 2009 and is a Facebook pioneer among Swiss academia.

Facebook likes for official pages Q1 2011 – Q1 2012
* not all 2011 numbers are available

For a list of all official Facebook pages found for program participants, visit this page with a list of links.

No new Twitter accounts have showed up in this first quarter of 2012, but the channel has certainly become a little bit louder. As of February 2012, yet another program participant is chirping in the Twitter sphere: The university of applied sciences ZHAW has started tweeting (they quietly set up their account in the last quarter of 2011).

Twitter followers for official accounts Q1 2011 – Q1 2012
* not all 2011 numbers are available

Take a look at this list of official Twitter accounts, found for program participants.

Prominently placing links to official channels on the institution homepage takes visitors directly to those pages and makes sure that official pages are easily identified. Half of the participating institutions link to their official social media channels on their homepage. Along with their newly established presence on Facebook and Twitter ( at the end of 2011), UZH has now joined the majority of institutions and prominently features links to their official presence on their homepage.

UZH’s homepage (German version) with links to their official presence on social media

To get an overview of who else is linking to official presence on their homepage, which institutions have an official Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, or Linkedin page, take a look a this list.

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Twitter Insights for Q1/2012

At this point, every Swiss university and most universities of applied sciences have at least one official Twitter account. We thought that was a good reason to take a deeper dive into the numbers and learn more about how Swiss academia is using Twitter. We took a look at each peer group, checked the number of tweets they generated in the first quarter of 2012, how many new followers they gained, and what their potential reach was.

Swiss Universities: Federal Institutes Take the Lead

Among all Swiss universities, the two federal institutes clearly stand out with their high numbers of followers. Accounts in English and German for ETH, and English and French for EPFL allow them to target their messages to specific audiences. EPFL was the most active institution on Twitter and generated 188 tweets in the first quarter of 2012, followed by UNIBE with 100 tweets, ETH with 98, and HSG with 89.

Does activity on Twitter have an influence on number of followers, in the sense that the more you tweet, the more followers you get? This hypothesis may have its limitations (it is difficult to prove causality, for one, even if there is a correlation), but let’s assume for a second that it is true. In that case, we could divide the number of new followers by the number of tweets during that time and use that ratio as an indicator for the success of Twitter activity. We did this for all official Twitter accounts as you can see in the chart below. UNIL has the highest follower per tweet ratio with 17 new followers per tweet in the first quarter of 2012. ETH received nine new followers for every tweet they generated. Of course, you should take this with a grain of salt. Other factors such as the content of the tweets, the time they are sent, and the way you engage with your followers play an important role in acquiring new followers, but it’s interesting to look at these numbers every now and then.

Number of new followers in Q1 2012 divided by number of tweets during that time (e.g. UNIL had 154 new followers and 9 tweets: 154/9=17.1)

Twitter followers are very valuable. Depending on their own follower base, a retweet or mention by a follower can reach hundreds or even thousands of people. “Twitter reach” is the magic word and shows the potential audience on Twitter.

What is Twitter reach? The reach of  a certain brand (in our case the Twitter handles) is a measure of the impression the brand is making online (in our case only on Twitter): how far it’s moved across the Web and how many eyes, ears, and mouths are seeing, hearing, and talking about it (Source: 10 Key Awareness Metrics to Track by Amber Naslund)

We estimated Twitter reach for Swiss universities and found once again, that the federal institutes are the frontrunners with a Twitter follower reach of 327,000 (EPFL) and 260,000 (ETH) in March and April 2012.

Twitter reach of Swiss universities – March & April 2012 (Source: Radian6)


Universities of Applied Sciences: HSLU Tweets the Most

EHL and HSLU were the first two in this peer group to join Twitter in Spring 2009 and are the most followed universities of applied sciences, as shown earlier. HSLU was also the most active institution in the first quarter of 2012, followed by BFH who started tweeting in Summer of 2011.*

HSLU did not have the highest follower per tweet ratio in this quarter, however. That belonged to ZHAW with four new followers per tweet in the last quarter. The institution, who joined Twitter in the last quarter of 2011, sent its first tweet on February 10, 2012 and gained around 50 followers in the first quarter of 2012.

Tweets, retweets, and mentions helped universities of applied sciences expand their social media audience in March and April 2012. HWZ had a potential reach of almost 89,000 followers on Twitter, for example, while HSLU had almost 55,000.

Twitter reach of Swiss universities of applied sciences- March & April 2012 (Source: Radian6)

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Realizing the Potential of Twitter Reach

The first quarter of 2012 may not have brought a whole lot of new presence, but looking at the increase of likes and followers shows us that institutions are active on social media and are continuously expanding their fan base. In this blog post, we highlighted reach on Twitter to illustrate one of the key benefits of social media. The potential reach a larger audience on Twitter is only limited by the social graph of your established audience. Retweets by followers, for example, have the potential to be seen by many more people than just the followers of  that institution. For those who are interested in strengthening relationships with the community, listen to our past webinar with Georgy Cohen, who gives general advice on how to engage with your community, but also how to reach out to press through Twitter.

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* Our research for universities of applied sciences is limited to the universities participating in the program. Depending on the structure and nature of the institutions, they either participate as a whole (like BFH or HSLU) or as sub schools (e.g. most of the sub schools of the university of applied sciences in Zurich participate, such as the HWZ or ZHAW).


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7 Ways to Bring Your Community into the Content Creation Process

This post was authored by GEORGY COHEN and originally published in January 2012 by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI.) It serves as a good follow up to our Dec 2011 webinar. We recently rerecorded the webinar.

Content is a critical interface between ourselves and our community. It helps us achieve organizational objectives, reinforce our brand, and communicate key messages.

We, as community managers and content marketers, are well-positioned to create relevant, useful, and interesting content that serves both our audience’s needs and our goals. We live and breathe those goals, and we know our brand identity almost as well as we know ourselves.

But just because we can do it all on our own, does that mean we should? The truth is, our brand belongs to our community as much as it belongs to us, if not more so. That identity is not a decree that gets passed down; it is shared and, more to the point, it is co-created. While we shape and communicate it, they are out there living it.

It’s tempting to approach community management like we are conducting an orchestra. We want to lead a performance of everyone playing the same song in tune. But I think of it more like the scene from “Big,” where Tom Hanks’ character is playing “Heart and Soul” on the giant keyboard with the CEO of MacMillan Toys. In truth, we are writing and playing the song together.

Simply put, if our brand is a story, our community members are the co-authors. Their investment in our brand is a potent commodity to tap into. Finding ways to leverage that investment is powerful — the authenticity of their external perspective can bring tremendous value to our content marketing efforts. To that end, here are a few ways to integrate our community members into the content creation process.

1. Let their expertise take center stage

Whether it’s through the contact form on our website, an old fashioned phone call, or a query via Twitter or Facebook, we may spend a good part of our day answering questions from customers, prospects, and other interested parties. While we are perfectly able to answer their questions, there are likely experts within our community who are just as qualified to address issues and share their experiences. Queries present a great opportunity to highlight their expertise.

Use your social media channels to solicit responses to a query you feel others may be able to answer. Be sure to share those responses (just the accurate ones, of course) with the original requestor; you can also collect them into a knowledge base of questions and answers powered by your community.

Highlight their responses on your website, give credit where credit is due, and make this type of crowd-sourcing a regularly scheduled item in your editorial calendar in order to keep the knowledge base growing and up-to-date. After all, customer service is often the best marketing.

2. Activate your community in real time

The value of real-time content can be short-term, but high-yield. When a window of opportunity presents itself — say, due to a breaking news item or a special event —relevant content has tremendous potential to be viewed (and appreciated) by a large audience. Once that window closes, however, the content’s value and potential drops sharply. It’s a tricky proposition that requires being in the right place at the right time, ready to turn around and execute on short notice.

The same goes for soliciting content from your community. Activating your community members in real-time will help you see their true colors. Here are some options you can explore:

  • If there are current events with relevance to your organization, ask people to weigh in while they’re still hot topics of conversation.
  • Repost customer questions, and let others respond with their answers.
  • Share reporter queries with your audience and encourage them to post their take.
  • Use both online and offline channels to encourage event attendees to post pictures of themselves (preferably holding something with the company logo with a big smile) or share feedback on the day’s activities.
  • Got a deadline you want people to hit? Get your community to spread the word for you.

Also, pay attention to what is happening in the world at large. Anything from a particularly striking sunset in your city to Thanksgiving dinner to an awards telecast can spark a conversation and content creation around your brand. Tools such as Storify — which allows you to curate bits of content from various online sources and stitch them together into a narrative — can help tie all of the responses together.

3. Leverage the power of the hashtag

Whether it’s on Twitter or emerging channels like Instagram, hashtags are the topical threads that bind people and conversations on the web. By spurring conversation around a popular hashtag — whether it’s related to an event, a product launch, or just a brand theme — you can not only get your community talking about you, but you can trace and organize that conversation.

Using social conversation tools like Storify or Cover it Live, you can capture tweets from a selected hashtag and embed the collection on a webpage, blog post, or online article. A Twitter widget can simply scroll a raw feed of all tweets with the chosen hashtag (though be aware of the attendant risks of publicizing a feed you can’t edit). Alternately, you can simply mine the hashtag thread for interesting tweets that you can retweet, highlight as testimonials on your website, or use to inspire blog posts.

4. Curate and celebrate

Psychologist Carl Rogers once said, “Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.” Listening to our community members is integral to communicating in a way that will resonate with them. By listening, we can monitor our brand and find our fans (and foes); but, more to the point, it also helps us discover a trove of content and conversation. Turns out, the community is already talking and creating content about us, so why not use it to your advantage?

Tracking terms or hashtags on Twitter, finding blogs that mention certain keywords via Google, and subscribing to tags on Flickr and YouTube are just a few of the ways you can listen to the community chatter. Then, you can curate the resultant tweets, blog posts, photos, and videos to create a community-authored reflection of your brand. Don’t be afraid to celebrate content that isn’t your own. In the end, it doesn’t matter who created it; it just matters how well it tells your story.

5. Reach out and ask them to contribute

Along the same lines as the earlier point about letting your community members be the experts,sometimes getting your community involved in content creation is as simple as asking the right questions. Use your social platforms, newsletters, and other touch points to solicit responses to queries. You want your audience members to be interested in you, so it’s only fair to show some interest in them.

The questions you ask could be about your product or organization, for example, “What should we do better in the new year?” or, “What’s the most interesting way in which you’ve used our product?” Butyou can also use this as an opportunity to get to know your community members, and let them get to know each other, by asking questions that will be interesting to them, such as, “What are your new year’s resolutions?” or “How do you beat the winter blues?” or “What’s your favorite vacation getaway?” These are easy, straightforward topics people like to talk about and for which pretty much everyone has an answer.

6. Get a little chatty

In an e-commerce context, live chat functionality has been shown to lead to increased conversions and time on-site. In a content marketing context, live chat can help make our websites more dynamic, draw visitors who may not regularly go to our sites, and give our audiences the opportunity to shape our content with their questions and to feel heard. A live chat is great content both during the chat and as an archive after the fact. Also, topics that come up during a live chat may inform future content.

Rather than just publishing a Q&A interview or a two-minute video with a subject matter expert or notable individual, schedule and promote a live chat with them. One of my favorite services that deserves more ink than it gets is Cover it Live. As mentioned before, it not only can help you curate social conversation, but also allows you to host and moderate live web chats that you can embed on your website.

7. Add the sound of music

Music is the soundtrack to our lives, so make it the soundtrack for your content, as well. Social music services such as Spotify, Grooveshark, and Turntable.fm have become popular spaces for audiophiles to build networks around musical tastes. Spotify and Grooveshark are centered on the creation and sharing of playlists, while Turntable.fm combines a chatroom with collaborative DJ function.

Find relevant themes — they could be related to travel, holidays, exercise, geography, current events, you name it — and use your social platforms to ask people to suggest songs they think would fit. Create those playlists via Spotify or Grooveshark then share the links. On Turntable.fm, you can create your own room and encourage your community members to join and play songs around a chosen theme.

What other ideas do you have for integrating your community into your content creation efforts?

Image Credit: Marcin Wichary (flickr creative commons)