This document compares several social media monitoring tools on price, features, and ideal users. Prices range from free tools like Google Alerts and Netvibes to packages over $1,000 per month for enterprise tools like Radian6 and BuzzStream. Features assessed include number of keywords/searches supported, blog/video/news coverage, languages, and analytics/reporting capabilities. The tools are best suited for organizations of different sizes, from those with limited monitoring needs to large companies requiring extensive analysis.

1. Social Media Monitoring Tools
Comparision Guide
Radian6 ScoutLabs HubSpot BuzzStream Sysomos Google Alerts Netvibes Addict-o-matic
$49/month for 1 user, unlimited contacts, 10 searches,
10,000 search results, 1 project
$100/month for user account
$249/month for 5 searches, unlimited users
$99/month for 3 users, unlimited contacts, 15
$500/month for standard topic profile Small license: $250/month
searches, 20,000 search results, 3 projects $500/month for 5 queries, 5 competitors,
containing up to 10,000 items/month $449/month for 10 searches, unlimited users
10 tags, 5 users and 1 Facebook page.
Medium license: $9,000/year
$199/month for 7 users, unlimited contacts, 40
$1,000/month for topic profile containing up $749/month for 25 searches, unlimited users
searches, 40,000 search results, 7 projects
to 25,000 items/month Large license: $18,000/year
$1,000/month for 10 queries, 10
Price Note: Up to five searches can go into a
$399/month for 15 users, unlimited contacts, 100 competitors, 25 tags, unlimited users and
Free. Free. Free.
Note: A topic profile is a collection of workspace, and one workspace is ideal for Note: All licenses contain the same
searches, 80,000 search results, 10 projects 1 Facebook page.
keywords and phrases you determine in order monitoring one company. Therefore, an social media monitoring and
to search the breadth and depth of a brand or agency could technically monitor more than engagement tools. Price differences
Note: Contacts refers to the number of people tracked Note: Each account is ideal for
subject of interest. One topic profile is ideal one client by splitting up its search quota account for variations in other features,
in BuzzStream's relationship-management database, monitoring one company.
for each company being monitored. Items per between clients. Searches refer to the number for example: lead nurturing.
and searches are the number of keyword search
month refers to the number of search results of keyword queries.
queries. At least one project is needed per company;
obtained.
therefore, an agency could potentially run three client
campaigns for $99/month, for example.
Large companies with in-depth social media Mid-to-large sized businesses with in-depth Large companies with in-depth social
Businesses looking to integrate social Businesses with a strong focus on media and blogger Organizations with limited budgets and Organizations with limited budgets and Organizations with limited budgets and
monitoring and reporting needs, and extensive social media monitoring needs, and extensive media monitoring and reporting needs,
Ideal User conversations online surrounding brand and conversations online surrounding brand and
media monitoring into an integrated relations, and who are hoping to connect with these
and extensive conversations online
online chatter, or companies with limited online chatter, or companies with online chatter, or companies with limited
inbound marketing campaign. influentials online. monitoring needs. limited monitoring needs. monitoring needs.
industry. industry. surrounding brand and industry.
The top 150-200 blogs on the web.
Note: These blogs were editorially selected
Yes, but specifics are not publicly Only tracks blogs and searches whose
Blog Coverage More than 100 million blog sites. Roughly the top 12 million blogs.
available.
All blog posts indexed by Google. Roughly 50 million blogs. All blog posts indexed by Google.
RSS feeds you manually upload.
by the Addict-O-Matic team with a lot of
help from sources like the Technorati 100
and the blog reading lists of some of Addict-
O-Matic's favorite bloggers.
Video YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Revver,
Veoh, Dailymotion, Bebo, Grouper,
YouTube, Vimeo, Veoh, Revver, Metacafe,
YouTube. Uses a proprietary video search engine. YouTube. All videos indexed by Google.
Only tracks video streams whose RSS
YouTube, Blinkx and Truveo.
Coverage Heavy, Gamespot, Flickr and Dailymotion. feeds you manually upload.
BrightCove and many more.
Photo Flickr. Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug and Zoomr. N/A N/A N/A N/A
Only tracks photo streams whose RSS
Flickr.
Coverage feeds you manually upload.
Mainstream Top news sources include the top 15-20
Mainstream media coverage from more than Articles from English news sources that are Only tracks news sites whose RSS feeds
Media 20,000 online sources. available via web.
N/A All news stories indexed by Google and Yahoo!. 60,000 mainstream news sources. All news stories indexed by Google.
you manually upload.
news sites on the web such as CNN, The
New York Times, etc.
Coverage
Social Media Twitter, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, Facebook fan
pages, public discussion forums and opinion Twitter, message boards and blog comments.
Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn, Reddit,
Sphinn, Twitter, Yahoo! Answers and Twitter, forums, Delicious, Twine and message boards. Twitter and Facebook. N/A
Only tracks social media searches Twitter, Tweetmeme, Friendfeed, Delicious
Coverage whose RSS feeds you manually upload. and Digg.
sites. Yahoo! Buzz.
Multiple - Once you set your language
Multiple languages are supported including;
Content can be translated into any preferences, you can visit the Google Whichever language the content you
Language English, French, Italian, German, simple English. English. English.
language from within the tool. Alerts homepage and create alerts in that upload is in.
English.
Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
language.
Yes - Can select the type of alert: news,
Result Email Yes - Ability for users to get email or Jabber-
Yes - Can select how often to receive alerts:
blogs, video, web groups or
compatible IM notifications for specific topic N/A N/A N/A comprehensive, and then select how N/A N/A
Alerts daily, weekly or monthly.
profiles at intervals they select. often to receive alerts: as it happens,
once/day, once/week.
Number of No limit to keywords when setting up topic
profiles. This includes keyword combinations, Based on plan selection.
Tracks up to 40 keywords in its social
Based on plan selection. Based on plan selection. 1,000 N/A 1 per URL.
Keywords media monitoring section.
negative keywords, etc.
Number of
Search Results Based on plan selection. Unlimited. Unlimited. Based on plan selection. Unlimited. Unlimited. Unlimited. Unlimited.
Retrieved
Dashboard includes conversation results with the After you search, you can personalize your
Data is captured in real-time as discovered ability to add the author to database, collaborate with Dashboard can be personalized with results dashboard by moving around the
Dashboard offers real-time metrics for buzz Dashboard offers real-time social-media Dashboard contains recent activity,
and delivered to dashboard analysis widgets. team, add a note or designate a sentiment. Dashboard widgets such as weather, calculator, to- source boxes. When you're done, bookmark
Dashboard Includes text, pictures and video inside the
volume, customer sentiment and competitive conversations, which can be filtered by
also enables users to rate source and locate where the
mentions across platforms, user activity, N/A
do list, stock prices, news, social the page and keep coming back to your
share of voice across the web. source type. share of mentions and top influencers.
dashboard. author is connected on the social web for easy contact network integration, etc. personalized results dashboard for that
management. search.

2. Social Media Monitoring Tools
Comparision Guide
Examines each blog post, news story, Tweet and other
Sources are givn a 1-10 authority score
social content in your monitoring search results and
Uncover the influencers online by topic, based based on influence metrics (for example,
Influencers on user-determined formula weightings.
N/A N/A scores the author based on influence metrics (for
number of inbound links, Twitter
N/A N/A N/A
example, PageRank, site traffic, Twitter followers,
followers, blog subscribers, etc.).
etc.) .
Numerous analysis widgets can be set up to
analyze within a date range or for pre-set
Analysis of emerging themes in social media
days, including Conversation Cloud (pulls the Includes real-time metrics for sentiment,
conversations. Includes real-time metrics for
50 most common words associated with your competitive share of voice, buzz volume,
Analysis mentions), Topic Analysis (breaks the
buzz volume, customer sentiment, industry N/A N/A
influencer rankings, demographics and
N/A N/A N/A
analysis and competitive share of voice
mentions down by the words within them) and text analytics.
across the web.
Trending Analysis (shows how mentions
change over time).
Clickable graphs allow for easier data
Clickable graphs allow for easier data
Download graph data or copy graphs; some analysis, and screen shot capability
Graphs & analysis; from trends and influencer analysis
graphing capabilities include number of Graph showing referring social media Can export contacts and monitoring results into a CSV enables easy removal of graphs from too. Can get a list of all your alerts in CSV
to social media metrics and data segmentation, N/A N/A
Data mentions, frequent words, sentiment and traffic. file. Graphs can be created for trending format.
there are an abundance of ways you can graph
trending topics. topics, share of mention, sources,
your data.
demographics and more.
Manual sentiment ranking of each search result at the
Sentiment Automatically determines whether a post is Automatically determines whether a post is
brand level (result can have more than one sentiment
Automatically determines whether a post
positive or negative; however users can positive or negative; however, users can N/A is positive or negative; however, users N/A N/A N/A
Ratings ranking based on whether you are scoring it for
override ranking. override ranking. can override ranking.
yourself or a competitor).
Active community-powered support Each account is given an account
Free training/support. All users are required to Community-powered support group where
Support take a training session prior to use.
Free training and support. group where employees frequently
Buzzstream employees actively participate.
management team at Sysomos to help N/A N/A N/A
participate and suppot phone line. with questions, training and more.
Can assign tasks to people, manage task lists, Can create tasks and assign them to Can automatically track all touch points you and your
Workflow categorize posts based on priority or type of colleagues, track responses and team Can post results to Twitter or Facebook, team have with contacts, automate tasks like finding Can assign people tasks, leave comments Can email feed pages and subscribe to
N/A N/A
Management post, add notes, pull source information, response times, and save, tag, and share or mark as commented. and saving profile and contact information using the on posts, email mentions and tag results. the feed pages of others.
export raw data and set alerts. social media items. Buzzmarker toolbar, and assign tasks to people.
Can sort posts by influence, publish date,
Sorting comment count, unique commenters and Can sort by timeframe, importance or results Can sort by source or by brand and
Can sort by authority, keyword,
None - have to manually sort through all None - have to manually sort through all None - have to manually sort through all
Can sort by publication type, date and influence rating. geographic region, source, language and
Capabilities calculated engagement. Results can also be containing specific keywords. industry, which are user-generated tags. results to find those most applicable. results to find those most applicable. results to find those most applicable.
any combination of the above.
filtered by country and by media type.
Can quickly and easily slice and dice data to Auto-populating dashboard saves times at
find that which is most applicable to your Can quickly and easily slice and dice data to Simple interface; however, any in-depth Simplifies relationship management by tracking Can quickly and easily slice and dice Somewhat time-consuming in that data Somewhat time-consuming in that data first; however ongoing monitoring is
brand; 30 days of immediate historical data is find that which is most applicable to your analysis and reporting (outside of influencer conversations online and auotmatically data to find that which is most applicable must be manually sorted through and must be manually sorted through and somewhat time-consuming in that data
Ease of Use available with each topic profile, while active brand; immediate historical data is available referring traffic and leads) has to be done pulling contact information. Toolbar application adds to your brand; data is available for as any analysis and reporting has to be done any analysis and reporting has to be must be manually sorted through and any
profiles have an unlimited archive at no up to six months back. manually. enhanced ease of use. long as your account is active. by hand. done by hand. analysis and reporting has to be done by
additional cost. hand.
Some reports available include: weekly post
volume (shows the overall chatter about your
company and brand), positive and negative
Reporting sentiment spikes, engagement statistics
Some reports avaialbe include: volume, Pulls mentions from monitoring section, as well as Some reports include share of mentions,
percentage of index, share of voice and N/A task lists to create simple reports for clients that activity trends, top influencers and N/A N/A N/A
Capabilites (percentage of the overall post volume you
sentiment. showcase online activity and agency activity. demographics.
actually engage with and/or respond to), sales
leads, industry discussions, and share of
conversation among competitors.
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