Jason Falls
The social media monitoring space keeps getting more and more crowded as early startup success stories like Radian6 and K.D. Paine and Partners have been joined by both newcomer startups and established PR-related companies who have broadened their offerings. The latest to throw its hat into the ring is PRNewswire with its Social Media Metrics tool set. Like the other monitoring services, the product promises to allow you to listen to conversations about your organization, target the most influential social media sources for outreach, engage and analyze the buzz and ultimately report it all in a neat package for the executives.
This week’s look at Social Media measurement focuses on Cymfony, one of two firms singled out by Forrester Research as best in class for monitoring online buzz about your brand. There are a handful of very good services on the higher end (both cost and deliverables) of the measurement spectrum, but finding a differentiating factor is difficult. All seem to offer some combination of user dashboard for quick hits of information, coupled with human analysis and reporting for deep looks at conversations happening about your brand. However, there is one component of Cymfony’s offering I found to be outstanding. It’s the same factor Forrester pointed to in their analysis of Cymfony’s services.