A prerequisite for successful monitoring is the correct configuration of the tool, so that neither too many irrelevant nor too few mentions are found. Furthermore, the setup interface should be intuitive to use and offer the ability to work with Boolean operators. In this category, we liked the interface of Talkwalker and Synthesio the most. With Talkwalker you can either crawl the web for queries or images or include several articles of own or other social media accounts in the tool. In addition, you can set whether and how new results should be automatically tagged (Rule Based Tagging). You can also determine whether the tool implements an automatic sentiment analysis (positive, neutral, negative) or whether no sentiment should be assigned. The other tested tools do not assign a sentiment or the “mixed” sentiment (Radarly) if it is not recognisable automatically. Furthermore, with Synthesio own or third-party social media accounts can be monitored based on query, so that not all the entries are included in the tool, but only those that correspond to the query. Radarly offers special features with the Emoji search.
CATEGORY 2: PERFORMANCE & DATA VOLUME
If you want to find as many results as possible, Synthesio is the right address. With the number of findings, the source-type coverage and the search speed, Synthesio performs best. Many posts are found especially on Twitter and Instagram. Regarding language and sentiment, the results are mostly classified correctly. The error rate was 1 percent which is an exceptionally good level. Just after that, Talkwalker follows as a tool with the second-best result. In the speech recognition, however, Radarly showed the best result.
CATEGORY 3: TAGGING, PROCESSING OF THE RESULTS
The quality of the findings is decisive for the correct conclusions. A simple and fast processing of the results, if possible in the form of bulk actions, is indispensable for error correction. In addition, the findings should be fast and easy to tag, best by shortcut, so you can filter out results to a certain topic. The best tool of this category is Talkwalker, followed by Digimind. Talkwalker is the only tool in which you can edit results directly in the list of results by shortcut (fast tagging). There are also extensive search queries for filtering the results. It is also possible to select several results, which allows a quick processing of similar entries. With Digimind almost all attributes of a result can be changed, even date, language and media type can be adjusted. Furthermore, similar results can be searched for and these can be assigned to a user for processing.
Whoever processes the data is dependent on a good export function. With Talkwalker, the number of results is unlimited during export and 91 metrics, including indexing dates, are exported, optionally in Excel or CSV format. The design and content of the dashboards are also crucial for the value added by a tool. The design of the dashboard is, of course, ultimately a matter of taste. We have especially liked the default dashboards of Digimind, Radarly and Talkwalker, because they enable you to recognise important KPIs, trending topics, influencers and communities at a glance. Furthermore, the possibilities of automated reportings play an important role in informing customers or other areas of the company. Alerting is also an important function that allows users to inform themselves about current developments on their own brand at an early stage. Talkwalker offers the most options for reporting and alerts. The reports, which are not labelled for an additional surcharge, can be created individually, as well as alerts, and be sent as HTML, Word, PPT, or PDF file.
CONCLUSION:
Talkwalker is the most balanced tool for our applications. Some tools are better in certain areas, such as Synthesio’s performance or Radarly’s additional features. The differences, however, are only minor and are outweighed by advantages in other categories. Every web & social media monitoring project must, of course, take different factors into account. Should there be questions on further functions of the tools mentioned or on your use case, we are at your disposal.
In the next test section, we will test the following tools: Netbase, Ubermetrics, Webbosaurus and Sysomos.
