Brandwatch vs. Later Social

The user interface is great and is easy to use for social media marketers of all ranges. In regard to planning and scheduling content, it allows all users with access to the capability to view all upcoming on an actual calendar. For organizational purposes, this is great and mitigates any confusion that other team members may have. The tool seems to always be updating which has its pros and cons because once you figure something out, there's a switch and you'll need to relearn how things are positioned but overall, it's not a heavy lift.

The free version is more than enough for personal use. But if you have a small business or if you're trying to grow your brand, it's better to use one of the premium plans. It's worth it. Later is especially useful if you manage multiple accounts for multiple brands/companies because you'll be managing everything with just one tool

Incentivized

• Clean, beautiful visuals that can be easily incorporated into reports to be used internally and externally.
• Customization-- anywhere from the queries you create to adjusting individual report widget/components this tool is very flexible.
• Excellent Customer Service and support. My Brandwatch rep is always open to hearing from me for questions and often reaches out to me to check in on my status or see if I would like to participate in beta programs.
• Constant innovation. It seems like Brandwatch is constantly updating and adding improvements to their platform--especially with their 2019 acquisition of Crimson Hexagon.

Incentivized

• Later's easy upload feature (drag and drop) is incredibly helpful, especially for multiple images and videos.
• The drag and drop option for scheduling content is easy, and images and videos load rather quickly depending on size.
• Captions can be saved if there are posts or common phrases that repeated and shared out from the content.

Incentivized

• Very steep learning curve- good luck training casual users on the difference between a query, a rule, a category etc
• Lack of access to FULL historic data is a serious drawback- populating that data takes a minimum of 24 hours and incurs additional costs
• Volume limits mean you may have to build your query to exclude mentions that may be useful in getting the full context of the situation

Incentivized

• I wish I could edit the look and feel of my pictures within Later a little easier. There are standard filters, but for brand sake, I need everything to be consistent.
• I wish there was a direct integration with things like Canva and Lightroom to make uploading and editing my images seamless.
• The biggest thing I wish Later did was allowing a better threshold for the free accounts. All of the helpful and useful features are for paid only (video posts, multi-image posts, analytics, etc). I can't justify the cost for just a few posts a month. I end up doing all of the video and multi-image posts manually, which lately has me questioning the benefit of Later's free version as a small business.

Incentivized

Brandwatch is a simple tool that is easy to learn and understand. Without any rigorous training, the team can learn to use it and interpret the results in an efficient manner. It saves a lot of work and helps the team to focus on other important time consuming tasks. I would like to continue using Brandwatch.

Incentivized

I've invited quite a few of my colleagues to try Brandwatch, and all of them were able to use its features with no assistance, and most of these had never used a social listening/monitoring tool before, or even a digital analytics tool! Brandwatch is not only easy to use, but filters, widgets, menus and other options are in intuitive places - it just works

Later is extremely easy to use. I love the visual planner portion of the tool so I can see ahead of time what my images will look like next to and stacked amongst each other! The posts are so easy to set up, tag, and schedule. UX and UI are great!

Incentivized

Brandwatch craps out sometimes. Pages freeze, data doesn't populate for hours. It's fine if you're not in a hurry but something to keep in mind if you're working in real-time. It's not as bad as Talkwalker but it's impacted timely delivery of work for me, and one of the first things I teach when introducing the platform is the process for closing out and re-logging in to see if it unfreezes

Incentivized

The Brandwatch Consumer Research customer success team is outstanding. Every member of their team has been wildly helpful and remarkably pleasant. These people go above and beyond to ensure you have all the tools and help you need to find success on their platform. I had several calls where we discussed difficulties users where having on the platform that resulted in an overall improvement in reporting across the board. They didn't just answer our questions, they dug deeper to find root problems and helped us build out dashboards to alleviate them.

Incentivized

Later are not just a software tool, they also provide marketing advice, tips, and tutorials via their blog. I’ve only had to reach out to them for help a few times and have found them to respond much faster than other tools in their category. I receive weekly emails with updates, marketing tips and invites to online events. I look forward to their emails as I’ve learned a lot of things that I’ve been able to actually implement.

Incentivized

good knowledge, great tips, although the program seems a bit disconnected. It could improve it they create more free webinars and a good content calendar and tackle little topics in each webinar. Their trainers are top notch and they know a lot about the tool but they fall a bit low on technical level understanding of how the tool actually works

Not that I can think of.

If you're using it to monitor your brand's social presence only, or if you're in an agency and using it to monitor existing clients and provide reports to them, then this is a great tool and you're hard-pressed to find something better. But if you're wanting it more for new business and discovery, there are tools that do this much better, including Sysomos and Crimson Hexagon. So it depends on what specifically you're trying to do. My agency was already using this product when I arrived, so I did not have a choice in the matter, but I've evaluated both of these other tools. Crimson is similar enough that the slight increase in cost doesn't justify switching. Synthesio is the most expensive competitor in the market (no matter what they tell you), but you get what you pay for. If you can afford it, go with Synthesio.

Incentivized

I went with Later for the lower cost subscription. The Hootsuite copy features is missed, but Later has hashtag suggestions which is nice. I really need something to post across multiple platforms. I also needed the ability to schedule more than the 5 free scheduled posts offered by Hootsuite. Later has been working great for what I need it to do to support my small event promotion business.

Incentivized

• At a high level, the biggest impact the Brandwatch Analytics has had is giving us the ability to quantify the impact of social media for our clients. In the world of social, ROI is defined and interpreted differently across clients (particularly where it's more difficult to apply traditional ROI) - so this may mean reporting on earned media for some, while for others it's measuring increasing engagements or social mentions over time.

Incentivized

• Increased social media involvement - Since utilizing Later and another social media scheduling tool, we have seen our growth rise as much as 12% in just a few months. This includes followers, likes, and engagement. This is huge for us since social media is a great way to generate new customers and increase brand awareness.
• Easier reporting - Analytics tools on most of the big three (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) are pretty limited. Later is a great way to take a look at our Analytics, and it makes it easy to understand the numbers.

Incentivized