While Social media monitoring tools are invaluable for helping with buzz tracking and for finding influencers, it’s important to take into account the importance of human analysis. The results are not just about the quantitative metrics; it’s more nuanced than that and you need someone who can understand and interpret the data according to the needs of your business.
When choosing a tool, one of the most important things to consider is how the tool lets you sort, filter and drill down into the search results. This will help you identify influencers that fit with your overarching social media strategy.
Depending on your requirements, you may want to pick a tool that focusses in on one platform, like Twitter or Facebook. Alternatively, you may also want to look for a tool that gives you a broad understanding of influencers e.g. how active they are across different social media platforms, or their average level of engagement etc, which will really enable you to focus in on the type of influencer or influencer activity that is most suitable for your brand or business.
Our final report, released via our blog on 3rd December, will give detailed information about the ability of each tool to identify influencers, and we’ll also reveal which ones we felt performed the best across a variety of criteria.
For now, here are a few of our highlights:
Brandwatch
- Perfect for giving you an overall view of where your influencers might be located.
- Allows you to drill down into results to find key information e.g. number of relevant posts.
- Very well integrated platform with easy to view influencer metrics .
Alterian SM2
- Drill down capabilities allow you to completely tailor results to focus on a particular site of influence.
- Easy to compare data.
- Well presented data with interactive graphs.
Attensity360
- Integrates metrics well e.g. Klout scores.
- Gives a broad picture about influencers and influence scores.
- Ability to add customised “user-defined metrics” to influencer search.
Peer Index
- Great for targeted influencer searches based on individual business objectives – results are very much tailored to your own needs.
- The ‘results’ report gives you influencers both at an individual level and a site level.
Radian6
- Allows you to drill down in to data in several different ways .
- Range of ways to segment and sort data to enable you to customize the dashboard.
- Easy to user interface to enhance user experience.
Scoutlabs
- Gives key insights about influence at a glance, with the ability to also drill down into data.
- Functions like “key quotes” and “frequently used words” give insight into the online conversations.
- Simple and inviting user interface that is easy to use.
Social Radar
- Gives a broad overview of what conversations are taking place about your topic.
- Allows you to view the relationships between different sources of influence on the web using their infographic style “Visualizer” tool.
Synthesio
- User can create an environment that is completely tailored to your specifications.
- Strong multilingual performer.
- Allows you to see influencers at both an individual and more general level.
- Great data presentation including graphs and charts.
Sysomos
- Unique feature include a tool that allows you to see the authority of people who are following influencers on Twitter.
- Allows you to find both sites of influence as well as individual influencers.
- Good segmentation of data.
Original Post: http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/2010/11/which-tool-is-best-for-finding-social-media-influencers/
