Evaluation Framework for Social Media Monitoring Tools

The evaluation framework for social media monitoring solutions by Helene Fritzsche is structured in 20 categories. For each category there are up to 5 grades, which reflect minimum to maximum requirements currently available on the market. Features listed below are defined as being most relevant for selection of tools. Features not mentioned are left out on purpose to keep evaluation short and simple.

Using the framework via somemo.at is free of charge. By submitting the evaluation framework below, vendors agree that information they give about their product is published and compared and that they accept related terms + conditions. For further information please contact the author helene.fritzsche@gmail.com.

If you are vendor of a tool, you just need to fill out this one single page:

  1. Provide the name of your tool.
  2. Classify your tool appropriately.
  3. Choose one of the 5 grades in each category by clicking on it below.
  4. Fill out the contact details, SOMEMO will use to get in touch with you.
  5. Press the submit-button.
Tool-Category:
 
 
Platform:
 
 
1 Sources
i
Limitation to one type (like blogs) or all social media sources or all thinkable including normal websites and not open accessible like intranets, too, only fixed sources or definable sources, too. Suggestions for sources depending on client or not.
 choose
2 Content-types
i
The question is, if tools already analyze more than continuous text, like describing texts in filenames and image descriptions or if they even analyze photos through automatic image recognition.
   choose
3 History
i
Only new data or also historical data? Retrospectively, too?
 choose
4 Freshness
i
Not every source delivers content without delay. Anyway: With which delay are results passed on to the client?
 choose
5 Semantic analysis
i
Different analytical approaches allow different insights for clients. Please select "Relation detection" only if your tool does it automatically (pre-computed or real-time).
     choose
6 Buzz / Issue monitoring
i
As both analyses base on keywords they are assessed as one. The system should exclude doublets or spam or advertisements – or at least mark them differently. (Only) results which include dialogs are of interest.
   choose
7 Extend of Sentiment detection
i
Sentiment detection (Tone analysis) evaluates whether the context in which the search term was found is neutral, positive or negative – or mingled. The analyzed context can include the sentence or a paragraph or the full article.
 choose
8 Process of Sentiment detection
i
Sentiment detection (Tone analysis) can be done automatically, manually or in a hybrid form, where automatic results are corrected manually.
 choose
9 Languages
i
In which languages do you analyze content concerning sentiments? (positive, neutral, negativ …)
10 Influence analysis
i
There are different ways to define how much influence an author has. It can by tied for instance to the reach of his article, to the size of his network, to the number of backlinks. The number of content-elements an author publishes is not enough for defining influence. As there are many possible calculations of influence and no standard, the author limits the grades of this item to the question, if there is any information on influence available and for which part of authors.
     choose
11 Trend Analysis
i
Trend analysis shows development of certain figures (frequency, sentiment …) over a certain or definable time-span.
 choose
12 Datamanagement
i
Are results arranged by relevance, is filtering easy, are there drill down functions? Note: No filter may only be acceptable, if there is not a large quantity of data to analyze.
 choose
13 Account
i
Is it a simple account or is it possible to restrict access to certain data for other employees? Is it possible to monitor different sets of keywords?
 choose
14 Dashboard
i
How flexible is the dashboard?
   choose
15 Alert
i
Does the system have an alert-function if a certain level is reached? How are alerts delivered?
     choose
16 Report
i
Which reports are available and how are they delivered? How flexible is reports management?
   choose
17 Data-Interfaces
i
Is it possible and easy to connect the system to other systems?
 choose
18 Price
i
Price "in EURO" for an account for at least one user including at least ten keywords for one year.
19 Test Account
i
If you provide a test account, which duration is it for?
20 Typical client
i
Please insert either reference companies or a short description of your typical clients.