Uncategorized, social media, Social Media Working Group, new technology, IIA Toolshed, Social Media Monitoring
IIA Toolshed – Social Media Monitoring
IIA Toolshed #3
Social Media Monitoring
Tooler’s Choice?
We looked at four social media monitoring tools, no one is the winner because they are all very different and serve different needs.
- Market leader Radian6 from salesforce is powerful and provides all you need for monitoring and listening, but it is truly an enterprise solution and requires a hefty investment. For enterprise, Radian6 is one of the best there is.
- Mention is accessibly priced tool for medium sized companies, with budget, who have reasonably large web and social search monitoring needs and wish to centralised the management of these. Ideal for those who have report generating needs and wish to involve large teams.
- New Irish offering, Olytico is an interesting software and a service tool. You tell Olytico what keywords you want to track, they set up the searches for you, and you use the tool to view results. It neatly overcomes the problem that many face with social media monitoring tools of only being as good as your search terms, but this at times can be a bit limiting. We decided that Olytico is the perfect tool for agencies who need to report back on how far their client’s brand travelled across the social media spaces.
- Social Bakers is probably best suited to SME’s, although it only really monitors what’s being said about your own social media, rather than listening widely about broader conversations. It serves a purpose for bringing reporting together and does that very well, providing benchmark industry data.
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers who took part this month are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Lynne Rourke, Buyandsell.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Beatrice Whelan, Sage
Product Name | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Website | Radian6 | Mention | Olytico | Social Bakers |
What Is It? | Radian6 is a Social Media listening and monitoring tool owned by Salesforce.com. It is heavily integrated with other Salesforce products (Buddy Media) and features. Very often used as part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud package. They are repackaging Radian6 with new features under a new name called Social Studio | Mention is a online social media monitoring tool that searches the main social media channels and incorporates alerts, responding capability, task assignment, reporting and analysis. | Software AND a service! It's a hybrid between self service and managed. You tell Olytico what you want to track, they set it up for you, and you can then do the monitoring yourself | Online, Self Service, Social Media Measurement Tool. Very good for competitive analysis & industry benchmark. Super basic for Free. Social Bakers Statistics = free. Marketing Suite = paid. Additional upgrade features = Analytics (customised reporting, benchmarking etc), Builder (Plan, publish, measure from single place), Advertising (plugin to FB & Twitter ads), Listening. |
What’s It Like To Use? | Simple to use. Set up automated searches by keywords and/or company name. Search by location for better results. One of the best things about Radian6 is its ability to turn searches into really digestible reports. Within seconds I can search, measure and identify business opportunities. It is great for analysing sentiment, monitoring competitors and identifying influencers and brand advocates. | Reasonably simple set up. Does a very broad search and generates good reports. Allows you to respond to mentions or allocate to team members. | Simple to use. It's all set up for you. Can view activity by day, and assign content to team members. Cannot track whether they have actually done something with it or not. It trawls all the main social platforms (FB pages plus open groups, not profiles), Flickr, Insta, not that strong on Pinterest, plus forums, and news sites. | It's easy to use at basic level. Free Trial offered for 2 weeks. Heavily focused on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. May be more customisation possible but not obvious. |
Does it give meaningful results for Ireland? | Yes - easy to limit results to Ireland only | Yes. Strong on Twitter especially when hashtaged | Yes. Strong on Ireland as you'd expect from an Irish tool. | Yes, as strong as any other country |
Is There Anything I Should Know? | Salesforce seem very cloak and dagger in giving anyone access to it unless they are a large multinational and already using the Salesforce platform. Very difficult to get a price list from them. They can penalise organisations when high volumes of data. | Range of functionality appears limited for the price. Much of the functionality could be achieved with free tools like google alerts and topsy/social mention. Low threshold on number of mentions means upgrade for busy accounts. | Workflow exists in that you can tick the box and assign content to team members. Team collaboration is coming, where you can mark it as done or dealt with. Good support function. | Ideally you should set up more than one business for benchmarking, so ideally you're monitoring you and your competition. I like the presentation format exportable reports. Love reports about which types of posts perform best, which times of day, and days of week, also industry benchmarks |
Who would you recommend it for? | Organisations already using the Salesforce.com platform. Great for big companies with a sizable budget and a large community to monitor and listen to. Possibly a good tool for Digital Agencies who want to offer listening and monitoring services to their clients. Enterprise. | Medium to large organisations with budget who wish to utilise the team collaboration features. Suitable for disparate enterprises centralising brand/company mentions who appear over a wide variety of online sites. | Agencies needing to track client mentions. Or brands/businesses who are being talked about widely and not just on FB and TW. Good example given was Jameson Film Festival, who were talked about widely for a month. No annual contract means they can sign up and use the tool just for the month. | Medium size businesses who are |
Cost inc VAT | Expensive - Pricing in Feb 2013 - The good folks at Radian6 got back to me and it turns out that they have changed their pricing model. There are now two different models: Business Model: $600 / month for up to 10,000 mentions Agency Model: $950 / month for up to 1 million mentions Historical Data: $100 / month going back to 2008 (except Twitter that goes back to 2010) Source Some hidden charges especially when there are peaks in activity, which seems counter intuitive | Starter $29, Growth $99, Company $299, Enterprise $799 (per month) | €700 per month, without limitation on keywords or Results or seat/user. If you want separate feeds per channel, €200 per additional channel. Single chanel is good 2-3 clients.. | "Free Trial for 2 weeks. $120 per month thereafter. I believe there are other more tiered products, but v difficult to get access, and default is to 120 per month. Social Bakers Statistics = free. Marketing Suite = paid. Additional upgrade features = Analytics (customised reporting, benchmarking etc), Builder (Plan, publish, measure from single place), Advertising (plugin to FB & Twitter ads), Listening." |
Name of Tool: | Radian6 | Mention | Olytico | Social Bakers |
Ease of Use | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 |
Price | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
Documentation | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
Mobile Compatible? |
3 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
Tablet Compatible? |
3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
Social Media Platforms It Monitors | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
Sentiment analysis | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Reporting | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
Unique Insights | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Analytics? | 3 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
Any Restrictions? Gotchas? | Some hidden charges especially when there are peaks in activity, which seems counter intuitive | You can’t experiment with searches | No API integration | |
Customisable dashboard | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Product Intuitiveness / UI | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
Team Collaboration Features? | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Are we going to continue using it? | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
Total Score | 35 | 32 | 32 | 34 |
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Social Media Design Tools in July.
Summary:
Uncategorized, social media, IIA Digital Toolshed
IIA Toolshed – Social Media Publishing Tools
IIA Toolshed #2
Social Media Publishing Tools
Tooler’s Choice? Hootsuite
Check out the detailed review below including Buffer, SproutSocial, and SocialOomph.
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Dermot Casey, NearFuture.io
- Greg Fry, Contentplan.co
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- Alan Cronin, AIB.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Laurynas Binderis, Talentevo
- Eoin Young, Electric Ireland
- Beatrice Whelan, Sage
Product Name | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Website | Buffer | Hootsuite.com | SocialOomph | Sproutsocial |
What Is It | Online scheduling tool that publishes to TW, FB, LI, G+ and now Pinterest. Ronseal! | A Social Media scheduling and reporting platform. You can schedule and manage content from your Facebook (Personal and Business), Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Wordpress accounts. It also has 100s of additional apps that gives your monitoring and commenting abilities on other sites including Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. | Social media productivity tool which allows you to publish and monitor social media activity | Sprout Social is an online social media management, reporting and engagement tool that enables publishing (incorporating analytics's) to various social media platforms. |
What’s It Like To Use? | Pretty easy and seamless. No real learning. Support was a bit generic. Dashboard intuitive - easy to remove accounts. When you move stuff around or change times, it caused a few problems. | Easy to set up and use. Just go to hootsuite.com and sign up. Easy to add Social Media accounts and search for add on apps. Its dashboard is easy to navigate, search social networks and see previous scheduled posts. Hootsuite has a mobile app that allows you to manage your activity on the go. However - would recommend that you do the bulk of your Hootsuite scheduling and reporting from the Desktop dashboard. | When it comes to giving access to another user, they must create a social oomph account, it's time consuming. The interface appears to be very poor but it does have some good functionality. Cons: It is not intuitive and learning to use it takes some time. The design is hard to navigate. Pros: It has feature called Queue Reservoir which helps to drip feed updates to selected social profiles. The Posting section does have a number of features such as creating and managing updates, creating updates from RSS feeds, and creating updates via email. The Following section facilitates follow-back and auto-welcome on Twitter as well as finding new people to follow function. The Monitoring section allows to set up regular email alerts for monitoring particular keywords found on Twitter. Other stats like mentions, retweets and following are also available. | Set up on a free trial was painless with minimum effort and adding social media profiles was generally a 2-3 click process to add Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Feedly. It also incorporates google analytics and operates using a classic dashboard. Posting to different social profiles was just a matter of adding the content and clicking the profiles with the optional inbuilt scheduler allowing flexibility on when it would appear. The dashboard in general was intuitive with rapid report generation and useful exploring and search tools. (EY) No option to upload video or multiple images to Twitter via the Scheduling App. Reporting option is great, with the option to sort Facebook posts per engagement particularly useful. Overall, it has many of the features needed under one dashboard (scheduling, reports, assign tasks, Twitter Advanced Search), which makes it extremely useful. |
Is There Anything I Should Know? | Nothing compelling to upgrade. Auto shortens links to buff.ly, but you can override. Time zone of scheduler is confusing. If you've already scheduled a post to publish, you cannot change the distribution e.g. just add in G+ after scheduled - instead set up new post 🙁 | Hootsuite has a cool bookmarker called Hootlet that allows you to schedule content directly from your web browser. Hootsuite also supports RSS feeds so you can ensure you latest blog is automatically distributed to Social Media as soon as it’s published. It also offers suggested content - which is similar in nature to the content you share and allows you add it to your publishing schedule (hit and miss at present). Hootsuite integrates with Google Analytics, Twitter and Facebook Insights and can create Social Media reports in seconds. Pro account holders are allowed create a number of reports for free, otherwise they come at an additional cost. Hootsuite allows you to add 100s of apps to your dashboard. E.g. Pocket and Feedly from Hootsuite and even manage YouTube Account. Finally - the only issue with Hootsuite at present is that it does not (currently) display visuals properly when posting from to Twitter, it posts as a link. And if you're posting a link, it posts 2 links if it's got an image in it. | 45 mins to integrate a FB account. Not a good UI. Can schedule. Can bulk upload. Can integrate a bit.ly account and create a unique URL shortener. Very basic posting functions. Can create a Reservoir - can create a schedule to post at different times. Monitoring is basic - just mentions, and RT's. CLUNKY. Needs training. UGLY. Basic version can only add Twitter. 7 day trial you can add other accounts, big learning curve to learn it in 1 week. Support was quick enough, help section is descriptive - good - but it's a big time investment. | Follow up mails including offers of phone support from a dedicated person gave a nice personal touch to the experience. Sprout Social really comes into its own when you are managing teams with a powerful task manager and is very suited to larger organisations with disparate teams and multiple profiles. Its mobile version works well with similar functionality. One of the draw backs is the relatively low number of social profiles it connects to and would expect instagram etc. |
Who would you recommend it for? | "An organisation (doesn't matter the size) who is already running its own publishing schedule, who wants to supplement with shared content. Yes, it's probably not as sophisticated as some, but definitely a great scheduling tool, and a lot of functionality comes for free." | My favourite of all the platforms, but currently has a few issues with posting images (in particular to Twitter). Would recommend a PRO account that allows you to manage up to 100 accounts. I would use it to post to multiple LinkedIn and Facebook Groups. | We wouldn't! | A large organisation with multiple profiles and team members |
Cost inc VAT | $10 per month Awesome (up to 100 posts and tweets + 10 social profiles per month) Freemium model. Free package is pretty good to get started. "Awesome package” has some analytics with export functionality, you can have more multiple admins on an account, and allows you to schedule more posts in advance. Awesome plan is $102 per year, Small Business Plan is $50/mth which is pricey. Discount for non-profits is nice touch. | Free account for up to 5 Social Networks. Hootsuite Pro (recommended) $9.99 per month (free 30 day trial available) - allows you to collaborate with up to 10 team members, manage 100 accounts and access free Social Media reports. There is a further paid option - Hootsuite Enterprise for larger organisiations. | €12.58 every fortnight, €27.26 monthy, €81.77 quarterly, €327 annually. | 59 (USD) for Delux, 99 (USD) for premium and 500 (USD) for team version per month |
Name of Tool: | Buffer | Hootsuite | Social Oomph | Sprout Social |
Ease of Use | 4 | 4 | 1 | 4 |
Price | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
Documentation | 3 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
Mobile Compatible? |
4 | 4 | 0 | 3 |
Tablet Compatible? |
4 | 4 | 0 | 3 |
Social Media Platforms it posts | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
Schedules image posts? | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 |
Schedules videos post? | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
Sentiment Analysis? | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
Analytics? | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 |
Any Restrictions? Gotchas? | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
Customisable dashboard | 2 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
Product Intuitiveness / UI | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
Team Collaboration Features? | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Are we going to continue using it? | 1 | 4 | 0 | 4 |
Total Score | 44 | 52 | 14 | 42 |
One to watch: echobox – This new scheduling app might suit large publishers,
enabling them to curate ALL the content on their site to send to social. It forecasts ideal post times and layouts, AB testing each post. The range of features includes forecasting Page Views (which is the publisher’s bread and butter) and the algorithm learns what works and what doesn’t. One key aspect is you can flick a switch, and ultimately let it publish for you. Someone may be out of a job soon.
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Social Media Monitoring in June.
Summary: Hootsuite won, but Buffer closely followed. SproutSocial if you’re an enterprise. Avoid SocialOomph.
Uncategorized, IIA Digital Toolshed, news, new technology, IIA Toolshed
IIA Toolshed – Screencasting Tools
IIA Toolshed #1
Screencasting Tools
Tooler’s Choice? Camtasia because of the range of functionality, ease of use, support and additional use for easy video editing.
And we’re off! We’re delighted to welcome you to the inaugural post from the IIA Toolshed!
What is IIA Toolshed? IIA Toolshed is a group of digital marketers & digital experts who know how difficult it is to keep up with the ever changing array of tools at our fingertips, to supposedly make doing business easier! To make things simpler, we’ve come together to test, evaluate and share the reviews of a broad selection of tools & technologies, to ultimately make the decision easier for you, when choosing what tools might best suit your business needs. At the IIA Toolshed, we come together every 6 weeks to evaluate a set of tools for a particular business objective, and we’ll publish our findings right here.
Who are we? The Toolers are:
- Maryrose Lyons, Brightspark Consulting
- Eoin Kennedy, eoinkennedy.ie
- Felicity McCarthy, Sparkdigital.ie
- Dermot Casey, NearFuture.io
- Greg Fry, Contentplan.co
- Ailbhe Lee, iia.ie
- Sasha Kinch, inm.ie
- Sebastian Boppert, Eventbrite
- Conor Murphy, AIB.ie
- David Cuddy, Realex
- Laurynas Binderis, Talentevo
- Eoin Young, Electric Ireland
TOPIC 1: Screencasting Tools First up to test were a range of screencasting tools! What is Screencasting, you ask?? Screencasting is a really neat process of recording what’s happening on your screen as you do it. You can include narration as part of the recording, to explain exactly what you’re doing on screen, all from your own computer or laptop. Screencasting software is often used for short “how-to” videos and online tutorials. It can be a really helpful way to show a customer how to do something technical, as if you’re by their side! Here’s what we found about the four tools we reviewed:
Product Name | Screenflow | Camtasia | Screencast Maker | Jing |
---|---|---|---|---|
Website | Screenflow 5 | Camtasia | Screencast Maker | Jing |
What Is It? | Screen capture for Spielbergs | An easy-to-use screen recorder that acts as powerful video editor by recording your voice and on screen actions. It also allow the easy import of additional media and advanced editing functions. | A low cost easy to use screen capture tool for the Mac. | Entry level screencasting & screen capture tool |
What’s It Like To Use? | Easy to use. Simple to install. Free product. It's got a lot of functionality that make it too advanced for the average Joe. | Intuitive and very flexible piece of software. Good tutorials. Trial download with only an email address required and full functionality for 30 days. Designed to have you up and running with projects very quickly. Lots of functionality and export options. | Screencast Maker allows you to record your entire screen or just part of it. It also allows to narrate audio and even allows you to include video from your webcam. Output in.mov. | Free, easy to download, you can record activity you carry out on your screen, to share with others, including recording narration for additional explanation. Output in swf format and png for images |
Is There Anything I Should Know? | If you are an Apple app store maker and you want to make videos to sell your product, this is the tool for you. | Camtasia has restrictions but its core abilities of creating professional screencasts is more than enough. Navigation and editing were easy with good ‘undo’ and keyboard shortcuts meaning you don't to start from scratch with mistakes. Transitions, inserting text, adding pointer arrows and animation are simple with drag and drop. Editing and cutting out sections was fast and less fiddly than other software. Export as an MP4 was simple along with other sharing options for YouTube etc al. As an MP4 it was simple to upload natively to other platforms and to insert on websites. It took approximately 4 hours to go from first open to a reasonably polished looking screen cast. | There is a free trial available at screencastmaker.com where you can create screencasts of 2 minutes or less, but €4.99 will get you the full version. Screencast Maker is great for start ups and SMEs on a shoe string budget. | Videos limited to 5 mins, output to swf makes videos hard to share on FB, YouTube etc. No editing capability. |
Cost inc VAT | €93.24 | €85.14 for a single license. | €4.99 | FREE |
Ease of Use | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
Price | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 |
Documentation | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 |
Mobile Compatible? |
4 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
Tablet Compatible? |
4 | 3 | 4 | 1 |
Captures Images? | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Captures Video? | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Edits Images? | 1 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
Video Time Limit | 4 | 4 | 5 | 1 |
Entire Desktop | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Element of Desktop | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Watermark | 1 | 4 N/A | N/A | 4 |
Conversion Formats | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Total Score | 35 | 47 | 40 | 37 |
What’s next from the IIA Toolshed? Well stay tuned, because every 6 weeks we’ll be reviewing another set of tools. Next up, we’re reviewing Social Media Publishing tools. Which ones? Well you’ll have to come back to find out… all will be revealed in early May!
Summary: Overall, it’s fair to say that Camtasia is the standard that most people expect, and around the table it was commonly agreed that it had the best feature set. Thereafter Screencastmaker is a good option for those who are a bit more cash-strapped, but keen to get going. The other tools are more likely to be used for those getting started, or for internal communications.