The company that builds the perfect tool to track brand mentions across the social Web will become a billionaire. Unfortunately, that person or company has not yet launched that tool, but every brand and marketing manager anxiously awaits its arrival. Until then, SocialSeek by Sensidea is getting a bit of buzz for allowing some useful tracking of brand mentions on social media sites like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Blogger and more. Tracking can even be done on a city level, so there is value in terms of demographic segmentation and regional marketing and branding strategy development.
SocialSeek is free, and it’s important to remember that it’s far from perfect. However, with no perfect tool available to track brand mentions on the social Web, any tool that can add to the data you collect can be helpful and should be researched and tested. Just keep in mind that the information should be exploratory in nature because it’s not going to be completely accurate.
There are several tools online that help companies track brand mentions online They come with a variety of pricetags and functionalities and again, none are perfect. Take a look at the sites below, research and test them, and find the best mix for your company and brand.
- ViralHeat.com
- PeopleBrowsr.com
- Radian6.com
- ScoutLabs.com
- SocialMention.com
- SamePoint.com
- WhosTalkin.com
What tools have you found that help track brand mentions across the social Web? Leave a comment and share your recommendations.
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
You are smoking something. SocialSeek is rubbish. Great, it vommited up a bunch of mentions, now what?
I don’t think you can compare what you are comparing. You have search engines in there compared to analytics products. Something that searches stuff on the fly and shows you 10 mentions vs something that aggregates over a time period and analyzes stuff is not the same.
That’s exactly my point. No tool is perfect, so you should test a variety of tools and find what mix works best for you — aggregators and search tools.