Speaking the Truth: How to Choose a Social Media Analytics Tool

For every hand there is a glove.

The problem is, all the other glove-sellers are constantly trying to get you to buy their gloves instead, and other people keep recommending a whole load of other gloves that just don’t fit you at all.

This pained analogy is a [weak] attempt at describing how difficult it can be in selecting the right kind of analytics software for your own organisation.

To start with, there are social media analytics, social media measurement, social listening, social media monitoring and countless millions of other terminologies to keep track of, and each will come with a wide range of competencies and feature sets. Each will claim to be the best on their own website too, of course.

Now, if you haven’t already noticed, we’re a social media analytics technology vendor. So, perhaps surprisingly, what we’re about to recommend is not to buy Brandwatch. At least not straight away, anyway.

Create a shortlist

Clever marketers and other departments seeking specific platforms for analysing social media will begin by outlining what they actually want to do. They may outline some desirable objectives, like:

• I want to keep track of how many followers we have
• I want to understand which pieces of content are performing best
• I want to better manage and schedule our brand’s social media posts
• I want to listen to what customers are saying about my marketplace
• I want to keep track of influential mentions in the media of my brand

There could be many thousands of other, similar, statements too.

We cover this part of the process in a little more detail in this blog guide to creating an RFI for SMM tools.

However, once it’s clear what your actually want from your software, and get the appropriate agreement from all the stakeholders that may be involved in using it, then you can begin the procurement process in earnest – full-on research.

Do some thorough research

Look up independent reports. Search for comparison documents. Go on sites like G2 Crowd to see what customers are saying about the software. Go on sites like Glassdoor to see what employees are saying about it. Try to source materials that don’t champion a specific tool – remember that your requirements are unique and only you can be the judge of the best platform for you.

The final stage is the most important, and that’s in the demoing. Request demos of every tool that looks like it might be able to meet your objectives. Give the seemingly slightly weaker ones a chance to impress in action. Stress-test them.

Push them to their limits. Try to envisage why they might not be the right choice. Take the salesperson out of the equation and line up the actual products against each other.

Ask the vendor to set you up with a trial so you can test it yourself. Get demos and trials of the front runners and make a decision based on personal experience, not just whichever has the flashiest advert or what appears highest in Gartner’s rankings.

Compare and select.

And, before anyone suspects something fishy or that we’re somehow trying to mask anything – we practice what we preach. You can see every independent report that includes Brandwatch by clicking here, even the ones we don’t fare amazingly in.

We want people to read them and see whether we’re the right fit for them. If not: good luck and no hard feelings. We won’t try and sell you something that you won’t find useful.

So, go on, request a demo. Get your hands dirty. Make the intelligent choice that’s right for you, not just for us.

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