Social Media Monitoring : Brandwatch Analytics [Tooltest]
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CURE Tooltest Social Media Monitoring, Part 6

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Brandwatch is arguably one of the best known companies in the field of social media monitoring. Apart from the effective visualisation of the social buzz at the dmexco by the Vizia social media command centre, this is also attributable to the fact that the UK company has already been on the market since 2005.

Brandwatch offers three different products: The said social media command centre Vizia 2, a target group and influencer analytics tool called Brandwatch Audiences and the oldest social listening and analytics tool Brandwatch Analytics, which is relevant to most of our use cases and which we will examine in this post. We used Talkwalker as the benchmark.

1ST CATEGORY: SETUP

The setup area is well-structured. Queries can easily be set up with Boolean operators, and tagging rules can be entered. A preview shows the history of the queries and which authors and sites mention the topic most frequently. However, only Twitter, Facebook and Instagram can be set up as channels. Channels, queries and authors can be grouped. Hierarchical tags cannot be assigned. Moreover, no historical data are available in the default configuration.

2ND CATEGORY: PERFORMANCE & DATA VOLUME

In our test, Brandwatch Analytics found slightly more mentions than Talkwalker. One of the reasons for this is related to the language detection properties of Talkwalker. In our test, we only considered English and German mentions. However, Talkwalker presented German mentions as another language. This is most probably because Talkwalker focuses more on the name of the account or on the hashtags used rather than on the actual text.

However, Brandwatch Analytics found fewer mentions on news pages and blogs. This suggests that the tool is more social media-oriented. However, Talkwalker found more submissions on Instagram, and comments on posts were presented separately.

Though the sentiment analysis could be improved in both tools, the performance of Brandwatch was 17 percent better. The identification of the sentiment in the case of images is a special challenge for both tools.

3RD CATEGORY: TAGGING, PROCESSING OF RESULTS

In this area, Brandwatch Analytics is a highly intuitive tool that is suitable for beginners. In terms of the processing of the mentions, however, it does not match Talkwalker. Only up to 100 mentions can be displayed in the dashboard, which makes the handling difficult. However, bulk actions such as tagging are possible for the 100 displayed matches. There are three sentiments that can be changed via mouseover in the dashboard view. Tags can be assigned after mentions have been selected or opened in the individual view, where they can be processed with the help of shortcuts. A useful feature is that mentions can be assigned to other users and can be allocated to categories such as service, hotline, etc. Unfortunately, operators are not supported in the search box.

Another cumbersome aspect is the fact that after selecting filters, “Apply” needs to be clicked in a second step.
In the dashboard, the metrics of mentions can be hidden. The engagement is shown next to the mentions. Some metrics, such as the gender, location and status, can be changed. Others, however, cannot be changed, e.g. the language.

Another advantage is that user information is displayed directly when the image of the Twitter profile is clicked.
Mentions can be shared directly from within the tool, and direct interaction in the tool is possible from Facebook and Twitter.

4TH CATEGORY: EXPORT, DASHBOARD, REPORTING & ALERTING

Export: There are 108 columns with metrics, but no indexing date. However, the export contains the entire text, which might result in copyright violations. A disadvantage is that in the case of an export of more than 5,000 mentions, the export needs to take place via a separate tool in which filters such as the time and language cannot be configured. No deep link is presented for Facebook comments, which makes the manual processing more difficult.

Dashboards are easy to set up and customise. Preconfigured templates are available for various use cases. Metrics can be hidden. Disadvantage: When working in the dashboard, you always have to save it, which disrupts the workflow. There is no general default dashboard (such as Analytics in Talkwalker) in which you can see the mentions. Moreover, the Trending Topics dashboard does not define “trending”.

Reports: Dashboards can be downloaded as reports or be created via templates. The download takes place in PPT format. The advantage is that graphics, texts and blurbs are editable, i.e. the values can be modified manually or copied.

Alerts: Customised alerts are possible. The same filter options are available as for the search. This enables a very minute adjustment of the alerts (e.g. user mentions from a certain number of followers).

CONCLUSION

Brandwatch Analytics is an effective and mature tool. For our use cases, however, we prefer the Talkwalker solution. The main reason is the limited number of channels supported by Brandwatch. Moreover, the handling of the tagging and the dashboards are not as satisfactory as in Talkwalker. Advantages include the possibility of grouping queries, channels and authors, the large number of mentions and the analysis of the sentiment. Another positive aspect is that the graphics, texts and blurbs in the reports are editable and the export file contains up to 108 metrics.

Of course, every use case is different. Therefore, it is important to get good advice when selecting a tool. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions concerning other functions of the above-mentioned tools or concerning your use case.

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