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Bloomfire vs. Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Bloomfire

    Score8.4 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Bloomfire provides knowledge engagement, aiming to deliver an experience that connects teams and individuals with the information they need to excel at their jobs. Their cloud-based knowledge engagement platform aims to give people one centralized, searchable place to engage with shared knowledge and grow their organization's collective intelligence.

    $25

    per month

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Social Squared is a SharePoint Discussion Board App that can be deployed across SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Social Squared improves productivity and efficiency by providing structured discussion forums for employee and student discussions. For Microsoft SharePoint Social Squared is a SharePoint discussion board application where users can post questions within relevant forums and receive answers to their questions from subject matter experts. The…

    $2,200

    per year per installation

    Pricing
    BloomfireLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Editions & Modules
    Basic
    $25.00
    per month
    Social Squared Discussion Board
    From $2200
    per year per installation
    Social Squared Discussion Board Enterprise Edition
    POA
    per year per installation
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    BloomfireLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup Fee$25No setup fee
    Additional Details—Prices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products. $2.20 per user/year on top of base price. Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD. All packages include free technical support. Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    BloomfireLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Considered Both Products
    Bloomfire
    No answer on this topic
    Lightning Tools
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    158 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    90 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    160 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    54 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    99%
    Implementation went as expected
    73 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    BloomfireLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Bloomfire and Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Feature
    Bloomfire
    -
    Ratings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Mobile Access00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Search00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of Bloomfire and Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Feature
    Bloomfire
    -
    Ratings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Chat00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Notifications00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Discussions00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Bloomfire and Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Feature
    Bloomfire
    -
    Ratings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Versioning00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Video files00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Audio files00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Document collaboration00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
    Access control00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
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    BloomfireLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
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    Score9.2 out of 10
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    Score8.9 out of 10
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    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    BloomfireLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.2
    (174 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (14 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (15 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    BloomfireLightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Bloomfire
    Ad testing:
    • PTS: needed to bring a new senior marketing team member up to speed on how we got to our current TV campaign
    • Solution: Series featuring consumer insights, why specific spokesperson, agency brief, the entire creative process - scrips, animatics, rough cuts, feedback, and testing at each step. Including the actual creative from each step.
    • Total time to build: 1 hour
    Concept testing:
    • PTS: things get lost, findable but version control
    • Solution: everything in one placeConcepts, testing, IHUTs, verbatims, videos with transcripts. Reduces the possibility of missing something, helps with any builds (reuse), but gives us a the chance to dig deeper. Example: search on terms like "indulgent", or "crispy" or "share" much faster
    • Total time to build: 1 hour
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    Their customer service it top notch and always responsive. I struggled in the beginning a little bit because I'm not tech savvy and we had to add it to our SharePoint site but they helped me along the way and even had share screen meetings with me to assist!!
    Read full review
    Pros
    Bloomfire
    • Quickly reach out to whatever employee segment you want to reach by posting a topic and it will send a notification to everyone in that group with a link to the posting.
    • Bloomfire saves all of the previous posts so in your free time you can go to the site, and explore the various range of topics others have posted. The information on there will only be as good as the person posting it, but it will be people within your company and industry posting it. So it will always be helpful.
    • Bloomfire is a place to be noticed by your peers. Have a great topic you want to express, my company allows all to post there as long as we keep it professional. So you can share your ideas or experiences in a safe and productive manner. But we do have some fun on there too!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Organizing Data
    • Opens up discussion, whether publicly or anonymously
    • Easy to setup
    Read full review
    Cons
    Bloomfire
    • I would recommend adding a feature to combine different posts/series by job title (so in addition to the Revenue Ops category, there could be a structured walkthrough for Revenue Manager).
    • Live Q+A sessions for group onboarding initiatives.
    • Ability to label bookmarks by priority/job type.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • I would love to be able to assign various people as administrators of different topics (this may be an option now but a couple years ago it wasn't)
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Bloomfire
    Most likely we will renew, our team needs a refresher on possible opportunities to advance our usage and learning of opportunities to move this answer to a 10, can't live without it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Bloomfire
    Bloomfire is an easy-to-use platform for posting information and asking questions of my peers. It also has a user-friendly search capability. Yet like any other CMS, the secret to success rests in such items as the ability to use metadata to tag content or posts, and Bloomfire provides a wide range of options to make posting content and subsequently searching for it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    Our employees really like the fact that they can find things easily with the search feature and add questions and comments as they see fit.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Bloomfire
    I have not needed to pose questions to the support team yet, as it is a very simple piece of software to use, however, its help documents and the bot ready to answer questions let me know I am in good hands. The help center could load a little quicker, but that's my only complaint.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Bloomfire
    I like Bloomfire because it is more concise with the work I do whereas Google search engine would provide broader information. It has just been so user-friendly, and easier to use [than] I could have imagined. I would use this program over any other that I have tried in the past.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Bloomfire
    • Feedback from users in being able to perform transactions for members has greatly improved.
    • There has been an increase in engagement of material presented in posts by learners in training classes.
    • Reps and agents say they feel confident they can easily locate information if ever there is a need on the front line.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • We signed up for a 3 year contract and hope to do another 3yr contract when this one is up. :)
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Bloomfire Screenshots

    Screenshot of You are provided with a variety of options to brand your Bloomfire community, such as customizing its colors, displaying your organization’s logo, and building a custom Promo Bar. This creates an aesthetic that truly reflects your company’s culture.Screenshot of Bloomfire features an AI-powered search that makes sharing and searching for information a lot easier. It deep indexes every word in each piece of content, regardless of whether it’s a PDF, slide deck, video, or any other file type. The platform also creates tags for your content automatically. And if a video is uploaded, Bloomfire automatically transcribes it, making the spoken words searchable and allowing users to jump to the exact part of a video where certain keywords appear.

All of those features result in an easy and smart searching experience. There’s no need to navigate through folders or guess file names. All you need to do is perform a search like you would with Google. When searching, you can further narrow down your results based on categories such as author and content type.Screenshot of Bloomfire's AI enables you to search and find the video you are looking for based on its audio contents.Screenshot of Use Bloomfire while you work seamlessly across your favorite apps.

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board Screenshots

    Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD
Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.Screenshot of SHAREPOINT DISCUSS BOARD – TOPICS VIEW
When navigating into a forum, the topics and discussions that are taking place are shown. Any new topics that not yet read will be highlighted. It also displays whether topics have been answered, their average ratings, how many views and posts are within the topic, and also provides the ability to subscribe to the forum to be notified of new posts within it.Screenshot of READING DISCUSSIONS AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK
Social Squared offers a threaded discussion view with the ability to provide feedback to other users.

Posts can be rated, voted upon, or liked by users in order to give feedback to the user creating or responding to a post. Additionally, replies can be marked as answered or marked as featured, which gives readers of forums assurance that the response they are reading is validated to be the correct answer.

Users also receive feedback through the earning of badges. The more users post or mark posts as answered, the more points are rewarded. This makes it easy to spot subject matter experts.Screenshot of SUGGESTED TAGS
Social Squared provides a rich text editor for creating and replying to topics. The Rich Text toolbar provides functionality such as inserting images, YouTube videos, Stream Videos, Formatted Code Inserts, as well as font formatting.

While typing, suggestions on how to tag a post appear. Selecting an existing tag will provide consistency in the tags used making it easier for other users to discover the post.Screenshot of SOCIAL SQUARED TAG CLOUD VIEW
The Social Squared Tag Cloud view makes it easy to navigate to posts within a specific category even if they span multiple forums. The more a tag appears in different posts, the more prominent it will be in the tag cloud. Users can navigate to posts with the tag in one click.Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS TAB
Social Squared is a Discussion Board App for Microsoft Teams Tab’s and Microsoft Teams Personal Apps. Social Squared provides information workers the ability to post questions within relevant forums, and receive answers from their team. The Discussion Board layout for posts makes it easier to find answers to questions that may have already been asked before. Through features such as “Mark as Answered”, “Forum Moderation”, “Post Rating”, “Post Likes”, “Post Voting”, users will be assured that the answers they are reading are validated.