Mention
Mention (https://mention.com/en) monitors multiple social networks, news sites, forums, blogs, and any web page in 43 languages. It offers several helpful features: one, the capability to export data, filtered by time and source, which allows you to compare your results to competitors’ results; and two, real-time alerts plus a daily or weekly digest by email. Its free basic plan allows one user, one alert, and up to 250 mentions per month but doesn’t include analytics. Paid versions — which have higher limits on the number of alerts, mentions, and users — start at $25 per month for 2 alerts, 3,000 mentions, and 1 user; all plans include a free 14-day trial.
Social Mention
Social Mention (www.socialmention.com/advanced_search) tracks and measures what’s being said about a specific topic in real time across more than 100 social media services. It provides a social-ranking score based on its own definition of popularity — which includes self-defined criteria of strength, sentiment, passion, and reach — for every search.
You can select to monitor only specific services and choose among service categories of bookmarks, blogs, microblogs, videos, images, or all. Although you can input only one term at a time, the results may go back up to 30 days.
http://socialmention.com/tools) to place on your site or in your browser bar. These widgets are simple plug-ins, but your programmer will need to copy and paste the widget code onto your site.
Sprout Social
A high-end package of social media tools, Sprout Social (www.sproutsocial.com) includes a comprehensive monitoring feature that combines all alerts, messages, and actions into a single stream that can be analyzed to discover trends. You can watch for social media comments about your business, brand, products, competitors, or industry topics in near real time. Prices start at $99 per user per month, but the company also offers a 30-day free trial.
Talkwalker Alerts
A comparable alternative to Google Alerts, Talkwalker (www.talkwalker.com/alerts) monitors the web for mentions of your brand, competitors, name, events, or other keywords. It provides email updates to your email inbox or RSS reader on a daily or weekly basis. The free version of Talkwalker Alerts has a limited number of searches; however, the paid Pro versions of Talkwalker (www.talkwalker.com/en/social-media-intelligence) include multiple social media sources, higher limits on the number of alerts, and other features. Prices start at approximately $800 per month, with a 14-day free trial.
Measuring the Buzz by Type of Service
The number of monitoring tools competing for market share is astonishing. The following tables are not intended to be comprehensive lists; instead, they simply provide some idea of what’s out there. Don’t forget the “simple” measuring services available directly through a social media platform, such as Twitter’s own search function, as shown in Figure 1-6.
FIGURE 1-6: Results page from a simple Twitter search for New Mexican Restaurants.
Table 1-4 lists tools for monitoring blogs and forums; tools for news, RSS, and geolocation sites; tools for Twitter; and some high-end tools at the enterprise level. You can always search for free tools in each category to get more options.
TABLE 1-4 Helpful Monitoring Tools
| Name | URL | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Blog- and Forum-Monitoring Tools | ||
| Attentio |
http://attentio.com
|
A suite of B2B media monitoring and analysis tools; fee. |
| BlogSearchEngine |
www.blogsearchengine.org
|
Search for blogs by topic area or search term. |
| Sovrn |
www.sovrn.com
|
Free tool to help publishers monetize their websites and social media, reach their target audiences, and build relationships. Includes reports on user behavior, demographics, and actions. |
| Social News and RSS Tools | ||
| Google News |
http://news.google.com
|
Keyword search of Google News. |
| Yahoo! News |
http://news.yahoo.com
|
Keyword search of Yahoo! News. |
| Twitter-Monitoring Tools | ||
| Hashtagify.me |
http://hashtagify.me
|
Manage your own hashtags and receive alerts when hashtags are used. |
| SocialOomph |
www.socialoomph.com
|
One-stop shop for multiple tools to monitor and manage many social media channels; freemium model. |
| TweetDeck |
tweetdeck.twitter.com
|
|