G2 Crowd publishes Spring 2015 rankings of the best social media monitoring platforms, based on user reviews

CHICAGO, March 24, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The updated Grid^SM report for social media monitoring tools, published today by business software review site G2 Crowd, ranks 12 products to help purchasers in their selections.

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The Spring 2015 report is based on data from more than 400 reviews written by business professionals.

The Grid^SM, which is created from G2 Crowd's software review platform, factors in customer satisfaction reported by users and vendor market presence determined from social and public data to rank products.

Social media monitoring platforms are designed for marketing departments and organizations to listen to social media platforms. Marketing departments, agencies, and consultants benefit by being alerted to keyword usage, being able to respond to customer inquiries instantly, and understanding customer sentiment as it relates to their own and competitors' brands.

Social media monitoring tools have grown in recent years from purely offering listening features to include rich analytics, dashboard creation, and powerful queries with semantic analysis.

To qualify as a Leader, a product must receive a high customer satisfaction score and have substantial market presence. Brandwatch was the only Leader named. High Performers have high customer satisfaction scores with a smaller market presence than Leaders. Viralheat, Geofeedia, Mention, Digimind Social, Crimson Hexagon, Synthesio and Radarly were named High Performers. Brandwatch earned the highest overall customer satisfaction score.

Across all social media monitoring platforms, reviewers reported the product they use meets their requirements at an average rate of 84%, and on average reviewers said they were 86% likely to recommend the product they use. Products appearing on the Grid^SM for the first time were Viralheat, Geofeedia, Digimind Social and Radarly.

Some highlights from the social media monitoring reviews on G2 Crowd:

"[Brandwatch allows you to] create extremely powerful queries to improve your monitoring. This allows you to get extremely granular with your searches, meaning they are more accurate and you'll find mentions you probably wouldn't find with other tools. It's straight forward to create dashboards...to visualize the data and the new reporting functionality is incredible."
- Adam Connell, Founder at Blogging Wizard

"Viralheat…[allowed me] to include multiple keywords, phrases, hashtags [and more] in one topic profile rather than having multiple feeds that monitor only one word or phrase. Viralheat delivered the data in a digestible format that clearly showed us the information we were seeking. Also, the product was extremely easy to use."
- Anand Saggi, Senior Software Developer at Intel Corporation

"Geofeedia picks up social media...in specific locations without an app which makes it more powerful, perhaps than any other form of [geographic] social search. Also, from an ethnographic perspective, I really find the insights I have gleamed via curating the Geofeedia Geofeeds to be superior to anything that other platforms in the...space currently provide."
- Marshall Sponder, CEO of WebMetricsGuru and Lecturer at Baruch College

"I started using Mention about [six] months ago, and it almost immediately became an [indispensable] part of my community management toolbox. I'm a consultant, and it allows me to monitor conversations around multiple brands as well as follow industry news and topics in my relevant communities...As a result of using it, I have been able to grow my communities, make new connections, and alert higher-ups of important conversations happening around their companies."
- Carrie Jones, Editorial Director at CMX Media

"It was very easy to get started [with Digimind Social;] I thought I'd be overwhelmed with data, but it's organized in a simple menu and there are many cues to help you along the way...If you're like me, constantly being asked [about] the value of social media marketing, then this is going to help show you."
- Rosa Garriga Mora, Lecturer in Event Management at Grup CETT

"The most appealing feature of Crimson [Hexagon] is the fact that you can actually train the tool to deal with sentiment and conversations in the context of your brands conversation in the social space...The ability to customize each monitor to the needs of your organization makes Crimson a powerful tool. The customer support and account guidance goes above and beyond to ensure successful end results."
- Katie Kendall, Enterprise Social Monitoring Manager at Walgreens

"[Synthesio] brings in data that is relevant to your search and it is categorized effectively so that you can compare different parts of your business and/or competitors in the market. The sentiment seems to be accurate when done automatically, but can also be done manually in controlled population samples, which gives a reassuring level of accuracy when looking at the data."
- Oliver O'Conor, Social Media Analyst at Social Fuel

"We look at Radarly as the tool helping us taking the pulse of the webosphere. On top of that, the way we can collaborate on matters that can be challenging such as adverse events made it easy to ensure a quick response and a chain of events that is trusted and respected."
- Haider Alleg, Marketing and PR Manager at Neohumanitas

Of the more than 75 software vendors listed in G2 Crowd's Social Media Monitoring category, the 12 ranked products each received 10 or more reviews to qualify for inclusion on the Grid^SM.

Satisfaction rankings are generated from the user reviews, and market presence is calculated from vendor size, market share, and social impact. Based on a combination of these scores, each software solution is categorized as a Leader, High Performer, Contender, or Niche.

Premium research access can be purchased on the site for $599. These offer the original data for filtering and weighting, as well as individual profiles of each platform with the most helpful positive and negative social media monitoring platform reviews, detailed company information, user satisfaction ratings, feature scores and customer metrics. Future refreshes of the Grid^SM will provide updated rankings based on the latest reviews and social data.

Be sure to check out the new Grid^SM for the best social media monitoring tools and subscribe to the premium research.

About G2 Crowd, Inc.

G2 Crowd, the world's leading business software review platform, leverages its nearly 30,000 user reviews to drive better purchasing decisions. Technology buyers, investors, and analysts use the site to compare and select the best software based on peer reviews and synthesized social data. Co-founded by the founder and former executives from SaaS leader BigMachines and backed by more than $4.5 million in capital, G2 Crowd aims to bring authenticity and transparency to business technology research. For more information, go to G2Crowd.com.

SOURCE G2 Crowd

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