Technology

3 Considerations Before Purchasing Social Listening Software

Monitoring social media conversations isn’t new. For the last 15 years, brands have been starting to invest in technology that would allow them to listen to conversations across the entire social ecosystem. Everything from news articles, blogs, forums and social media, there has been a concerted effort to understand the context and sentiment of online conversations.

On the software side, there has been several technology providers that have come and gone, went out of business, or were acquired. And today, it’s still a very crowded market with some amazing innovation happening. For some reason, Gartner has yet to categorize social media listening software in the Magic Quadrant. Perhaps the software providers aren’t yet ready to make large investments just to appear in the report. Or, maybe Gartner doesn’t feel like the industry is large enough yet from a revenue standpoint. In either case, it seems to me to be a missed opportunity since many enterprise companies are making large investments into social listening software.

Forrester does provide a quarterly report called The Forrester Wave™: Social Listening Platforms, which analyzes the social listening software ecosystem and plots them challengers, contenders, strong performers, and leaders. The X axis represents business strategy and market presence. The Y axis represents the product roadmap and current offerings.

There is very little differentiation between most of the social listening platforms in the market today. Some have better features than others, but for the most part, there is market parity. in any case, before investing in social software, there are a few things to keep in mind.

 

Not all the data is created the same

Some of the social listening software platforms limit the amount of data that could be ingested into the system. They do this because they are charged by the networks and providers. In some cases you can ask for full firehose access, but that would cost a lot more than what initial investments or budgets might look like. When evaluating these platforms, the question around data limits should be one of high priority.

Also, social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, have strict API rules that prohibit social listening vendors from accessing certain data types. It’s critical to ensure that any vendor that is offering social listening access to these specific channels is doing so in a legitimate way. At this point I don’t think there are any exceptions and most legitimate software platforms do not promise or provide this data.

Data sampling isn’t always a bad thing. It really depends upon the goals and objectives of social listening. One consideration is whether or not news media or coverage is a part of the reporting.

The more user logins, the better

Some social listening vendors limit the number of logins they provide to clients. Typically, the ones that do this provide unlimited access to data or dashboards. be very cautious of vendors that limit the data and the number of logins they provide. It’s usually one or the other.

In some cases, rather than limiting user logins, vendors will limit the number of active dashboards that are currently pulling in data. They might sell the software as being “unlimited data” but there is always a cap, and that cap is usually based on the quantity of dashboards used.

News coverage also matters

The convergence between media analysis software and social media monitoring tools is closer than it’s ever been before. There are two reasons why this convergence is so close. In large enterprise companies, marketing and PR teams are collaborating more and integrating their programs. This requires a level of analysis beyond listening to social media conversations but also include the understanding of the stories that are demanding media attention. Secondly, data has become the currency and driver of all storytelling initiatives across paid, earned, shared and owned media channels.

From a cost efficiency standpoint, having one solution that can track media coverage beyond impressions and include a level of analysis that provides context is key to understanding that demand. It doesn’t make sense to have one platform that looks at social media and a separate one that looks at news coverage. Unfortunately, very few social media listening platforms have strong news media coverage analysis.

Moving forward

If anything, social media listening will become a more integral part of business in general. Certainly, it provides strong insights into conversations, coverage, sentiment and engagement but it can also have an impact beyond marketing and communications. Customer care, innovation and product design can be informed by the conversations of influencers and audiences across the social web.

It is critical that when selecting the right vendor for social listening, that all of these factors are taken into consideration. The data must be clean and legitimately pulled from the social networks. Unlimited access to data is also a huge plus. Unlimited logins is a benefit for large marketing and PR teams as well as those who have agency support. And lastly the integration of news coverage analysis is critical to the success of brand storytelling.

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