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SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING TOOLS

SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING TOOLS

Last Updated: April 2014

PRICING GUIDE

Social monitoring tools have evolved to cater to virtually every business need, so

it's no surprise that many pricing variations have sprung up to meet these

demands. The result is that making decisions around price is no longer easy

or straightforward. This pricing guide from Credii provides a quick primer on the di�erent pricing models this market

o�ers.

Evolution of Social Media Monitoring Technology

e've seen a surge in the number Wa n d t y p e s o f s o c i a l m e d i a monitoring tools over the last few

years. Tools that help with aggrega�ng Twi�er men�ons for small businesses, free Facebook aler�ng tools, cross pla�orm monitoring solu�ons for large enterprises, tools rich in seman�c analysis and focused on unearthing the meaning and context behind social conversa�ons, tools purpose built to serve support staff in troubleshoo�ng customers issues on social media – there's a whole ra� of solu�ons that cater to nearly every conceivable

The increase in diversity of solu�ons in this space has meant that newer pricing models have sprung up to accommodate the increasingly varied use cases that Social Media Monitoring (SMM) tools support today. Gone are the days when you'd pick a tool and expect to pay based on either the number of searches you make or the volume of results you get. These pricing models made perfect sense as recently as 2-3 years ago, when public rela�ons and marke�ng teams at large companies were pre�y much the only takers for social monitoring tools. But all that has changed and how!

Credii has developed this pricing guide as a primer on different pricing models this market offers. The intent of this guide is not to offer a detailed run-down of feature sets, assessing solu�on strengths and weaknesses or sugges�ng which SMM pla�orms work best for you, but to look at various pricing models in the market today and offer guidance on which pricing models work best for your scenario.

For starters, it's not just the big companies that use monitoring tools. Thanks to their ubiquity, social networks are now as relevant to local coffee shops and neighborhood stores as they are to Starbucks and Walmart. Usage has changed too, with crisis management just a small part of the overall picture now. Businesses small and large now use social monitoring tools for a variety of needs - to track brand men�ons, stay on top of compe�tors, find reviews of their products, listen to product ideas, iden�fy sales leads, analyze market trends, and perhaps most visibly, provide customer service and resolve issues. As monitoring tools evolved to cater to nearly every conceivable business need or size, so have the pricing models. But the rub, and it's a rough one, is that pricing in this market has become a veritable mess.

Solutions that are considered as part of this guide - Social media monitoring, social listening platforms, alerting and reporting solutions, social data curation, publishing and engagement solutions

Solution types that aren't considered as part of this pricing guide - Solutions that enable campaigns, promotions, advertising and selling on social media, and social analytics platforms

As part of developing this pricing guide, Credii studied pricing structures of over 70 social media monitoring solu�ons providers. While the most important pricing drivers are 'the number of concurrent search queries supported' and 'the volume of results returned', it is worth no�ng that these aren't the only two factors that affect what you are likely to pay for your SMM pla�orm. What follows is a brief overview of the different pricing models we're seeing in the market today.

VOLUME BASED PRICINGVolume based pricing models charge users to access a pre-defined quanta of social media data. The price increases with the number of men�ons, or results retrieved for a user-defined search term. Most vendors offer add-on packages for a fee, in case the number of number of results is likely to go above the pre-defined limit.

This model is ideal for:

(a) Businesses that have a fair idea of how many men�ons they are likely to get on a monthly basis (b) Businesses that want access to social media data, knowing that their topics of interest are unlikely to generate spikes (c) Small businesses and prac��oners wan�ng to experiment with monitoring on social media and studying different issues so long as they don't exceed their data cap.

In regards to add-on packages, we no�ce that the higher you go in your 'returned results' band, the price you pay per men�on decreases. This is evidenced by the example below:

Pricing Variations (for a single user account, with Number of Mentions on X-axis & Monthly Price in USD on Y-axis)

$6.99

$19.99

$44.99

$64.99

20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

$10$20$30$40$50$60$70

Price vs Volume of Mentions

mention.net

What factors impact thepricing of Social Media Monitoring solutions?

When should you not consider 'volume-based' pricing models?

If you are planning to run marke�ng campaigns or come out with new product launches that are likely to cause a spike in the number of men�ons you otherwise receive on social media or the Web.

If you are likely to deal with either a lot of spam or false posi�ves for your chosen keywords.

If you are closely tracking a number of search terms of pa�erns to protect your brand from run the risk of your brand reputa�on being compromised.

If the number of men�ons your brand or social account receives on a monthly basis is roughly greater than 30k.

When researching an industry, topic or compe�tors in-depth.

If you are planning to track online men�ons for a fairly high number of your compe�tors, most (or all) of who have a vibrant online presence.

200000 400000 600000 800000 1000000 1200000

$100$200$300$400$500$600

Price vs Volume of Mentions

$This is a partial list of vendors o�ering volume-based pricing. For a full list, sign into the SMM selection application

https://credii.com/select/Social-Media-Monitoring

Domain Tools Brandmonitor

Vendors who adopt a search, or query based pricing model enable users to access as much data as is being generated across social and the Web for their chosen search term. There are no restric�ons on the volume of data they can access, however, there are limita�ons on the number of queries they can run off the Social Media Monitoring tool. Typically, vendors offer a minimum number of searches per month as part of their pricing plan, and give users the op�on of increasing the number of searches for an addi�onal monthly fee.

Being able to define your search query accurately and with enough varia�ons in the way keywords can be expressed is paramount if you are to ensure that the gathered results are relevant and not just a bunch of spam links that have been spewed from a firehose. Depending on what you are looking to monitor, you may want to try mul�ple varia�ons of your query so as to make it more relevant. If you are heavily relying on a well-defined query for your monitoring efforts, it makes sense to look at the vendor's fine print to look at whether or not you have a flexible enough canvas to define your keywords.

For example: Brandwatch places a limita�on of 4096 characters in their raw text input field. This may seem ample at first, but considering Brandwatch's query interface is case sensi�ve (i.e. you will have to specifically spell out the following varia�ons of Coca Cola if you don't want to miss out on poten�ally important men�ons: coca cola, Coca cola, coca Cola etc.). Men�on.net on the other hand doesn't have a free form text input field. It gives you separate fields for each keyword you want to track, with a set of Boolean operators to help define varia�ons. However, building a complex query with more than 5 varia�ons of your chosen keyword isn't possible with men�on.net.

Let's say you're work for the marke�ng arm at Krispy Kreme, and want to track all men�ons of what people are saying about your glazed doughnuts on the social web. Here is how you'd typically go about it.

The simplest of queries wouldn't be too dissimilar to that in Google. You'd probably start off by keying in “Krispy Kreme Glazed Doughnut” as your ini�al query.

Accoun�ng for alterna�ve spellings, you may want to define “Donut” too as part of your search query.

Plurals need to be accounted for too. You don't want to be missing out on men�ons if people are talking about Doughnuts and your query has only Doughnut in it!

Your query would now look something like this (Next page):

Search-based pricing model: Read the �ne print

SEARCH BASED PRICING

(KRISPY KREME) (GLAZED) AND OR(DOUGHNUT DONUT DOUGHNUTS DONUTS)OR OR OR

(KRISPY KREME KRISPY'S CRISPY'S KRISPIES OR OR OR ORKRISPY CRÈME KRISPY CREAM) (GLAZED) OR AND OR

(DOUGHNUT DONUT DOUGHNUTS DONUTS) OR OR ORNOT (RICE KELLOGG KELLOGG'S CEREAL)OR OR OR

However, people needn't always reference your brand by your full name, or for that ma�er with the right spelling. You'll need to account for misspellings and varia�ons in your brandname. One of the misspellings of your brand (Krispies) shares its name with Rice Krispies, a popular cereal from Kellogg's, so when in fact people are referring to your product as 'Krispies glazed donuts', you don't want your feed to be filled with men�ons from Kellogg's breakfast cereal. Your query would have to exclude keywords such as Kellogg's or Cereal or even Rice for that ma�er.

Accoun�ng for all this, your query will now look something like:

Because there is a risk of being inundated with a flood of data (seeing as there are no restric�ons on how much data can be retrieved and presented), the ability of solu�ons to either support a complex enough query structure that accurately defines what needs searching, or their ability to filter results and weed out spam ex-post is extremely important. We see that vendors that perform well at mining for context behind a conversa�on and have robust spam management capabili�es (Radian6, Sysomos MAP, and A�ensity Analyze for example) charge more per keyword than others that don't.

Price per keyword bears a strong correlation with how well solutions weed out spam:

SEO

SOCIALMEDIA

This is a partial list of vendors o�ering search-based pricing. For a full list, sign into the SMM selection application

https://credii.com/select/Social-Media-Monitoring

Domain Tools Brandmonitor

BASED ON THE NUMBER OF USERS

BASED ON CHANNELS SUPPORTED

BASED ON IMMEDIACY OF RESULTS RETURNED

It is fairly common for Social Media Monitoring solu�ons targeted at mid-sized to large enterprises or agencies to offer a pricing structure that depends on the number of users that require simultaneous access to the solu�on. This is par�cularly relevant for geographically distributed teams, or B2C and e-commerce companies with a dedicated, full �me social media team tasked with responding to and troubleshoo�ng customer support requests on social channels.

Typically, solu�ons that offer a 'per-user' based pricing model offer capabili�es around role based permissions (so only authorized users can view or edit your saved queries), escala�on and workflow capabili�es, team tasks, calendars and team-based �cke�ng management.

Depending on the nature of your business, or what social networks your target market is spending most of their �me on, you may have to focus your monitoring efforts on mining one or more social graphs. A small video produc�on house for example would be more focused on content li� on channels such as YouTube and Vimeo, while a fairly popular, family owned B&B will be more interested in TripAdvisor. Some vendors charge you based on how many channels you're looking at support for (for example Oceanus Data specializes in data off e-commerce websites, and charges based on how many online shopping portals you want to track), and this is worth keeping in mind at the �me of evalua�ng solu�ons that best meet your need.

Alerts and no�fica�ons are usually an add-on to nearly all social media monitoring solu�ons that offer a real �me dashboard to track brand men�ons. Daily or weekly alert digests, if offered without real �me tracking (like that of Google Alerts or the starter edi�on of men�on.net) typically tends to be cheaper. This is par�cularly relevant for startups and other small businesses who want to tune in to social channels to listen to either men�ons of self or, (at a very basic level), track what compe�tors are up to on social media and the Web. Men�on.net's most expensive alerts-only plan with a daily refresh cycle for Web alerts costs $6.99, while its cheapest real-�me counterpart costs $19.99 a month.

This is a partial list of vendors whose pricing varies based on the number of users supported.For a full list, sign into the SMM selection application

https://credii.com/select/Social-Media-Monitoring

This is a partial list of vendors whose pricing varies based on the real-timeness of results returned.

For a full list, sign into the SMM selection application https://credii.com/select/Social-Media-Monitoring

BASED ON ADD-ON SERVICESThere is a range of add-on services to complements your Social Media Monitoring solu�on, and depending on the service chosen, you could end up paying more than you do in monthly licensing costs for your solu�on. It is recommended that small businesses, whose scale of requirements don't warrant most services that are on offer, examine the vendors' currently exis�ng knowledge repository (video tutorials, product documents, FAQs, webinars, white papers, case studies) and standard support channels (email, Twi�er and telephone), most of which tend to be free.

This is a partial list of vendors who o�er add-on services atop their technology platform.

For a full list, sign into the SMM selection application https://credii.com/select/Social-Media-Monitoring

Standard support (telephone, email, Twitter etc.)

Spam removal and human curation of data

Reporting and alerting services (daily, weekly or monthly)

Reporting and alerting in case of impending crises

Expert or practitioner help for strategic advice, metrics that need tracking and identifying social ROI drivers

Dedicated account manager

Outsourced social media and online presence management (services similar to those provided by agencies)

Custom Analytics (analyzing social data in conjunction with data in legacy, in-house systems)

Integration with legacy systems

Setup-and implementation

Ongoing training and maintenance

Relevancy to SMBs

Relevancy to large companies

Range of services offered

BASED ON ACCESS TO HISTORICAL DATAIn cases where brands are interested in conduc�ng research on brand percep�on on social media and how it has changed over �me, analyzing past seasonal trends, performing market research, industry analysis or in-depth compe�tor tracking, there is o�en a need to access and study backdated tweets, Facebook posts, news, blogs and blog comments and forum discussions. While most solu�ons offer archives that go back a month from the date the first query is set-up, some of them (Radian6, SDL and Sysomos for example) go further back, with data ranging from 6 months to more than 2 years old. All of this aggregated data, gathered from Facebook's Graph API or Twi�er's Firehose is made available via an API for an addi�onal fee. It is becoming increasing common for more vendors to offer an API that lets businesses access a vast content repository of historical archives thanks to licensing agreements that vendors have with tweet resellers such as Gnip, Datasi� and Topsy. It is relevant to men�on that access to historical archives isn't always cheap, and depending on the data set you're looking for and how far back you need to go, you could end up with a six figure bill.

This is a partial list of vendors whose pricing varies based on access to historical data.

For a full list, sign into the SMM selection application https://credii.com/select/Social-Media-Monitoring

B2B companies on the other hand, use social media slightly more differently in comparison with their B2C counterparts. We're increasingly seeing B2B businesses leveraging social media monitoring tools to (a) gather personal interest and a�ribute data about their customers and prospects, and append this informa�on to records in their CRM system and (b) use social media as a distribu�on channel for effec�ve content marke�ng and establishing credibility and thought leadership status in their respec�ve industries. Social CRM solu�ons – solu�ons that marry social monitoring with CRM capabili�es – are typically charged on a per-user basis or on integra�on points (i.e. how many legacy systems are you looking to integrate with and the levels of integra�on you are looking to achieve), or both.

If you are an agency looking at monitoring pla�orms for your clients, pricing models tend to vary slightly from those discussed above. Vendors with an agency specific monitoring pla�orm offer the ability to manage mul�ple clients easily and efficiently from a single dashboard; feature enterprise-grade workflow capabili�es to enable delega�on of tasks and ac�vi�es between agencies and brands; white-labeling op�ons; and slightly more leeway in terms of the volume of posts returned or the number of concurrent searches that can be run off the pla�orm. Agency specific pricing also normally features support for a lot more concurrent users, and as would be obvious, monitoring pla�orms for agencies tend to be priced higher than it would otherwise be for brands. For example YouScan's pricing for agencies starts at $14990 per year (with support for 50 keywords and 40 users), while their most expensive enterprise plan is nearly 50% cheaper. Ac�only's agency op�on is priced at $400 per month with support for 5 clients, 50 users, 50 accounts and a maximum of 75 keywords, while their most expensive pricing plan for brands trails off at $100 per month.

B2B

AGENCY

In the table on next page, we have tried to outline the most common use cases of social monitoring pla�orms, and suggested pricing models that tend to work best in these scenarios.

A cursory glance the demographics of adopters for Social Media Monitoring solu�ons indicate a strong bias towards B2C companies. This is largely because of the larger target markets they serve, a much wider poten�al customer base, and also because their consumers tend to be more vocal on social media and the Web.

Volume based pricing structures work best for B2C firms that can, to a fair degree, project the number of daily or monthly men�ons they get on social channels. However, B2C firms that are likely to deal with seasonal varia�ons of social ac�vity from their target market, or are likely to conduct a number of online and social marke�ng campaigns are be�er served with keyword based pricing models. It is fairly obvious that larger companies with mul�ple product lines, opera�ons across mul�ple geographies, and/or a social media customer support team should consider solu�ons that offer support for mul�ple concurrent users, and offer a per-user pricing model. Such solu�ons will typically have a volume-based or search-based component to it, and due considera�on needs to be made in order to assess which of the licensing structures serve their needs best.

Which pricing model works best for you?

Ideal pricing models don't just depend on business objectives, but also the pro�le of businesses

B2C

USE CASE THINGS TO DO LOOK OUT FOR ANALYTICS-HEAVY? TIME-CRITICAL? PRICING MODELSUITABILITY

CAPABILITIES NEEDED OF THE SMM TOOL

- Identify negative posts with high virality co-efficient- Engage constructively to manage the PR situation

- Track keyword sprawl- Identify terms that indicate buying intent

- Identify customers & prospects, study customer activity on social media- Enrich target customer profile

- Track online mentions of customers, understand public perception of competitors' brand

- Ensure compliance with internal governance policy- Ensure adherence to regulation (if your industry is regulated)

- Insensitive comments & misfortunate communication attempts, accidental or otherwise

- Data overload - focus on the metrics that matter & try demonstrating ROI for every campaign

- Always-on tracking of custom sources (such as video & file hosting services)

- Attributions! - If you are publishing third party content on social media, attribute the source

- Keyword tracking- Image & video recognition- Real-time alerts

- In-depth analytics- Link trackback- Ability to identify keyword sprawl- Native integration with marketing automation systems

- Real time semantic analysis & alerting- Content publishing approval workflow- Audit trail, logs & eDiscovery

- No restrictions on the volume of data returned- Analytics to derive actionable intelligence off competitor tracking

- In-depth analytics- Built-in lead scoring capabilities- Native integration with your CRM system

- Real time analytics & alerting- Ability to predict virality

- In-platform engagement capabilities- Support for collaboration if you have a team of customer support personnel

- Real-time sentiment analysis- Access to firehose data if you're getting more than 2000 mentions a day

- Integration with third party data mining & analytics tools- Competitor analysis- Platforms with a strong installed base in your vertical

- Pre-populated list of relevant influencers- Integration with third party influencer identification solutions such as Klout

- Trend analytics- Access to historical data- Sentiment analysis

- Integration with marketing automation systems

- Track conversions from campaigns- Monitor for changes in metrics (fan/follower growth etc)- Attribute conversions to outbound marketing efforts

- Maintain a log of all brand mentions- Analyze historical data depending on need- Identify changes to brand perception over time

- Discover influencers & brand advocates- Understand influence levels- Engage with influencers in your vertical

- Identify customer comments- Prioritize opinions & reviews- Analyze the overall sentiment & changes over time

- Identify customer issues as they emerge- Prioritize negative posts & requests for information- Engage with customers for troubleshooting & support

- Gauge the brand's mind share- Benchmark self with the rest of the industry

- Possible spike in mentions

- Affiliate link peddlers

- Negative sentiment spiralling out of control

- Data sprawl across sub- brands (iPad, iPod, Macbook etc)

- False positives! - Manually review all prospects before they get into your sales funnel

- Real time sentiment analytics- Good spam detection

Search-based

Volume-based

Search-based

Volume-based

Search-based

Volume-based

(Preferably including access to historical data)

Search-based

Volume-based

(If operating in a niche industry)

(If operating in a mainstream industry)

Search-based

Volume-based

(Otherwise)

( If you have customer-centric culture)

Search-based

Volume-based

(Limited products or services)

(If you have a broad product portfolio)

Search-based

Volume-based

( If expected number of results is low)

(Consider paying for human curation of data)

Search-based

Volume-based

(If number of competitors is low)

(Consider paying for historical data access)

Search-based

Volume-based

(Otherwise)

(If incoming traffic is high)

Search-based

Search-based

Volume-based

(Consider paying for integration with CRM systems)

Search-based

Volume-based

(Consider paying for archiving solutions)

Search-based

Pricing Per User

Pro�le Enrichment

Benchmarking (Share of Voice)

Customer Sentiment Tracking

(Voice of Customer)

Reputation Management

Competitor Analysis

Crisis Prevention

Product Launch

Brand Management

In�uencer Management

Customer Support

Lead Identi�cation

Campaign Performance Tracking

IP Protection

c

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