We have compared 10 social media monitoring tools based on 159 criteria. You can download the summary of the software comparison as a PDF.
In 2025, the amount of data will reach the number of 163 zetabytes, says a study by IDG and Seagate. This incredibly large number has 21 zeros. Most of this data is unstructured and therefore difficult to analyze. With the help of monitoring solutions, companies are now able to break down and understand this data.
Keeping an eye on the brand through social media monitoring tools
Companies are part of the public discussion. This has always been the case – and is also usually desired by companies. A positive mention in a journalist’s article has always helped companies to be well received by their target groups. But for a long time now, it’s no longer just the traditional media that talk or write about companies. At least to the same extent, communication takes place via social media. About companies, with companies and initiated by companies. In the process, the communication is not orderly on one channel, but very broadly scattered: in forums, on portals in Facebook groups, on blogs, in Twitter timelines, Instagram profiles, networking and news platforms such as XING and LinkedIn, or even in comments under articles in online magazines.
Companies need to keep an eye on this communication. To monitor media coverage, of course, as before, but above all to identify trends. Where does a critical issue emerge that you should respond to early on? What are the topics and issues that customers have around the company and its products? On-board tools such as Google Alerts or browsing the usual forums and specialist sites quickly reach their limits.
More and more companies are therefore turning to professional monitoring solutions for media monitoring of the various platforms and channels. With these, all data sources can be aggregated, analyzed and processed. Firstly, this enables marketing and communications managers to make decisions based on data rather than gut feelings. Second, critical issues can be identified much earlier and the company has the opportunity to react before they turn into a real crisis. Thirdly, the use of monitoring software offers the opportunity to get even closer to customers with their suggestions, questions, praise and queries. Only those who listen closely to their customers can develop products and services that really inspire them. This is a real opportunity that monitoring solutions offer for both corporate communications and product development.
Social media monitoring tools create the basis for content and channel strategy
However, the use of social media monitoring solutions is also very useful in content production. Based on the mentions identified, conclusions can be drawn to communicate more relevant content. After all, customers tell what they are actually interested in. Likewise, many monitoring solutions help identify the most viral content that can be used in one’s content strategy. Monitoring tools collect data on millions of sources and evaluate them. They can be used, for example, to check on which sources mentions are piling up in order to adjust the channel strategy based on this. Why have a Facebook presence if the conversations about your industry are happening exclusively on LinkedIn? If you want to know more about listening and social media monitoring, check out our article: Understanding Social Media Monitoring and Using It in Your Business.
After all, this article is supposed to be about an overview of different solutions. The Contentmanager.de team compared 10 commercial and professional social media monitoring solutions for you based on 159 criteria. The study covers various categories:
- the language of the user interface
- the coverage of sources and countries
- analysis functions
- operator functions
- reporting features
- legal criteria
- interfaces and integrations
- Pricing models
Which companies are behind the solutions?
When selecting suitable software, the main focus is on the range of functions. But it is also important to know which provider is behind the software. So you have to weigh up whether you would rather go for the established company that has several thousand employees and large development teams. For some tasks, however, it can also make sense to rely on a provider that does not have monitoring software „in addition“ in its portfolio as a generalist, but that focuses exclusively on it as a specialist. This market overview offers a wide range of options, from large global corporations to small specialists. From solutions that make more sense for enterprise customers to tools for small companies and freelancers.
Brandwatch Consumer Research
Founded in 2007, Brandwatch is headquartered in Brighton, UK, and employs 550 people. In Germany, the company has offices in Berlin and Stuttgart.
USP (according to its own statement): „Brandwatch has unique data coverage, high flexibility through filter options and detailed analysis capabilities – supported by machine learning and AI. Its more than 2,000 customers worldwide value our services from customer support to onboarding and other services.“
Cision Communications Cloud
The solution is a product of Cision Germany GmbH and has been on the market since 2017. According to the company’s own information, the number of employees is 4,000 and 100,000 customers use the tool.
USP (according to its own statement): „Fully integrated software solution for PR and communications professionals, with influencer database, campaign planning, media monitoring and media analysis.“
Echobot MONITORING
Echobot Media Technologies GmbH employs 50 people and is based in Karlsruhe, Germany. The monitoring solution has been on the market since 2001 and has over 1,000 customers.
USP (according to its own statement): „Flat rate model (unlimited search profiles, search terms, search results, users and email alert recipients) / press review and newsroom in corporate design / automatic company recognition / made & hosted in Germany“
Falcon.io
Falcon employs 400 people and is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. In Germany, the company is represented by an office in Berlin. According to its own information, 1,900 customers use the monitoring solution, which has been on the market since 2010.
USP (according to its own statement): „Falcon.io offers a unified SaaS platform for social media listening, advertising, engagement, publishing and analytics. We enable our clients to realize the full potential of digital marketing by managing multiple customer touchpoints from one platform.“
Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform
30,000 customers use the solution from the California, USA-based Meltwater Group, which is represented in Germany by Meltwater Deutschland GmbH in Berlin. The product has been on the market since 2001.
USP (according to its own statement): „Meltwater offers, among other things, (social) media monitoring and engagement as well as journalist and influencer contacts from a single source. Additionally, Meltwater invests in Artificial Intelligence to generate relevant insights, making it a pioneer in the industry. Customers enjoy German support and free training.“
NewsRadar®
NewsRadar® is a product of pressrelations GmbH and has been on the market since 2002 and is used by 2,500 customers. The company employs 180 people and is headquartered in Düsseldorf. In 2018, pressrelations generated sales of EUR 7.8 million.
USP (according to its own statement): „NewsRadar® offers the monitoring and analysis of news and opinions from earned and owned media in a single tool: Print, Online, TV, Radio, Social Media and Google Analytics. Thanks to numerous interfaces and visualization formats, NewsRadar® also forms the idelae data basis for corporate newsrooms.“
Radarly
The company behind Radarly is Linkfluence SAS, based in Paris, France. The company employs 200 people and had annual revenues of EUR 20 million in 2018. Radarly is used by 25,000 customers.
USP (according to its own statement): „For more than 10 years, Linkfluence has offered a unique union between state-of-the-art technologies and market research expertise. In doing so, we combine Artificial Intelligence with human expertise to help international brands turn social data into valuable insights.“
Ubermetrics
Ubermetrics Technologies GmbH is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, but also has a dependency in San Francisco, USA. With 50 employees, the company supports its 300 customers who use the monitoring solution, which has been in existence since 2011.
USP (according to its own statement): „Ubermetrics is a leading provider of AI-driven content intelligence solutions for communications professionals. In addition, as a full service partner, we offer all the services necessary for successful communication: Media monitoring, media analysis, press & media reviews, reach measurement, media usage and media response analysis.“
Webbosaurus
Also based in Berlin is Webbosaurus GmbH, which launched its solution in 2009.
USP (according to their own statement): „Combination of social listening & review monitoring, indiv. topic & sentiment identification.“
VICO Analytics
The company behind the solution is VICO Research & Consulting from Leinfelden-Echterdingen. The company employs 64 people and has 6,000 customers using the solution.
USP (according to its own statement): VICO Analytics captures social media data and news as well as ratings & reviews from online stores, where a large part of the communication often takes place. It has versatile data analysis and coding features for quick insights as well as deep analytics. It also offers flexible data extraction via exports, reports, alerts and API interfaces.
English as user interface language standard, German not for everyone
Software is usually purchased centrally and then used for all markets in which a company is active. However, they are then used in the local teams. This is where language barriers can arise. It is therefore advisable to compare the languages spoken by the main users with those that the providers have integrated into their software. All software solutions in the market overview offer English as the language of the user interface. Only two providers do without a German-language user interface.
One third of the providers have extensive experience in the automotive industry
The requirements for a monitoring solution can vary greatly depending on the industry. We therefore asked the vendors in which industries they are particularly strong. Three of the nine vendors were unable to identify a clear focus and indicated several areas of emphasis. Among the remaining participants in the market overview, a concentration on the automotive industry can be seen. Three providers see their focus here.
All solutions have the basic functions on board
Those looking for monitoring software first look for certain basic features that should be included. So rather a look at the mandatory than directly at the freestyle. The good news: on the whole, all tools offer the basic features that our editors asked about. All of them offer a preview function, an integrated search function and are multi-client capable. A whitelabel option is only possible with about half of the providers. All solutions are SaaS approaches.
Every provider can monitor almost worldwide
If you decide to use professional monitoring, you naturally want to make sure that you really keep an eye on everything. At least everything that is relevant for the company. Therefore, the number of sources and source countries plays a major role in the selection of a suitable provider. Decision-makers should be clear in advance which countries they want to cover and clarify with the provider whether the particularly relevant industry and trade media can be monitored. Decision-makers should also define in advance whether TV and radio must also be able to be monitored.
The analysis functions are the real treasure of the solutions
Detecting communication is one thing. But an important part of professional monitoring is also aggregation and, above all, analysis. This is the only way to draw strategic conclusions and identify trends at an early stage. That is why we have placed a clear focus on this area in our market overview. All solutions allow influencers to be identified, the total buzz volume to be displayed, and the channels to be viewed separately. All but one solution also provides information on who the author of the post/comment/hit is. However, software providers take different approaches when it comes to measuring virality. Information about demographic or geographic data around search results is provided by almost all solutions.
The analyst can choose from a wide range of features when using the tool
A monitoring tool is not a no-brainer – at least not if you want to take full advantage of its capabilities. It is necessary to deal with the matter and the range of functions intensively. Of course, it is best to appoint someone within the team to take over the function of an analyst and to build up the corresponding competencies. He or she then has a whole range of useful features at his or her disposal within the tools to extract the best insights and results for the company. For example, individual sources can be deleted/excluded from the results in all tools. Manual tagging of search results is also possible with each provider. For the daily work with a monitoring tool, it is relevant to what extent the search period can be precisely narrowed down. This option is available with all tools, and with some the period can even be defined to the hour.
The preparation of the results is important and possible with all providers
After analyzing the search results, it should be possible to present them clearly and without much effort. The tools have a wide range of features on board for this purpose: from prefabricated to customizable templates, from reports that can be created via drag & drop and then automatically sent to the company by e-mail, many features are standard with all providers. Nevertheless, there are differences, for example in the possibility of archiving or the searchability of reports.
There are hardly any differences in contract terms, but there are differences in minimum budgets.
When selecting a suitable monitoring software, there is of course no getting around the cost dimension. In terms of annual license costs, providers range from EUR 3,600 to EUR 6,000. Some providers also negotiate the conditions individually in principle and have therefore not provided any information. The minimum contract period is 12 months for most providers. Initial setup costs should be taken into account; the peak value here is 1,200 EUR. The good news for all those in the selection process: All but two providers offer a free trial version of their tool.
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