I’m about 9 months into my role at Strategies 360 running their social media outfit, and we’ve just about hit critical mass where we are exploring and upgrading our social media tools around monitoring and engagement. Up to this point, we’ve been able to manage without the enterprise level offerings such as Radian 6 and Sysomos, but times are a changin.
Over the past few weeks we’ve been demo’ing and researching a few different options, and it’s fairly overwhelming trying to make heads or tails on which solution might be our best fit. One thing has definitely become certain however is that no matter what we choose, no solution currently exists that can provide the right value and set of tools that fit every client we manage.
Offerings like Radian6 and Sysomos are great, but they are overkill for smaller clients that do not have thousands of mentions per month. To pay for those services for small to medium sized clients would be a waste of dollars. My hope was that either of these services would have had more flexible pricing structures that would allow us to use one tool for all our clients, but it’s become pretty clear we’re going to have to use a variety of tools based on client needs and budgets.
This certainly makes it more challenging to have to manage from a logistical point of view, but it may be unavoidable with where these tools are at in their lifecycles. I would imagine it requires a fairly substantial investment in infrastructure to mine that much data and be able to provide it in real time.
More to come as our team grows and we experience a variety of learnings along the way. Would love to hear from any of you around what solutions you have found successful.
Anonymous says
Jason Hi, post is straight to the point and i tend to agree with you. On another note did you check out @traackr and @peoplebrowsr <— using them myself and they have real time data and is great.
Jason Yormark says
I have tried traackr with mild interest. We’re going to take a closer look at some of the lower tiered tools to complement the use of Radian6.
Oethera says
This is from a company that will be training me next month… http://www.onlineprism.com/
Oether says
I currently use.. http://getclicky.com/
Robert Moore says
Jason, question for you: What do you think is the sweet spot for pricing for the small to medium market segment? The reason I ask it that my co. is building a platform to specifically address the needs of that type of customer and right pricing it for that segment is keeping us up at night. Any thoughts you might have would be greatly appreciated.
Jason Yormark says
Great question Robert. Hard to say, but somewhere in the $50-$150/month range I think would make sense. I guess what I’d ideally like to see is something like a Radian6 offering, but the flexibility to use the platform with smaller clients as well.
Matt Brazil says
Jason – you are correct, not one platform can fit
every client, especially those that do not have a significant volume of
conversation about them online. As you will know Social Media Monitoring
goes beyond a brand mention, competitors, industry, point of need conversations
(sales leads) all exist in abundance, this typically increases the volume of
useful and relevant conversations for a smaller company.
I do have a slight bias to Radian6 as a
previous Co-Founder of 6Consulting, we were the UK partner subsequently acquired
by them. That being said other tools
exist at the more economical end of the spectrum that do a great job for
smaller clients.
Jason Yormark says
Well we’ve definitely been impressed with Radian6 and certainly plan to integrate them into our agency, but yes, we’ll have to find a secondary offering as well for smaller clients.
Alistair says
I’m wondering what your opinion/ evaluation has been regarding sendible.com
Catherine Constantinides says
Hi Jason.
You should definitely check out OneDesk for social media monitoring: http://www.onedesk.com/features/social-media-monitoring/
Let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Catherine
[email protected]
OneDesk, Inc.
Sergei Dolukhanov says
Jason,
You should check out EvoApp, we may be able to help you find what you’re looking for. We have everything from white labeling a basic monitoring product (fully resell-able) to full scale enterprise business intelligence suites. Our flexible platform as a service can be customized to particular requests and demands, based on clients’ individual needs. We also have marketing intelligence and customer service intelligence enterprise products that help businesses mine the data that’s important to them, deriving meaning, intelligence and ultimately, showing how everything impacts ones business.
Logistically, it’s quick to set up and takes no more than a day of training to use any of our products. They are straight forward, clean, easy-to-use, but powerful. Check us out at http://www.evoapp.com, or email me at [email protected] and I’ll set you up with anything you need to know or answer any questions you may have.
Cheers,
Sergei Dolukhanov
@sdolukhanov (twitter)