Brandwatch vs. Simply Measured (discontinued)

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.

When we we're determining what's important to us we think budget, are we stuck in a contract; can it grow with our needs without hurting our pockets; can it solve our needs because we're such a large company that we almost need several solutions in one. Reporting - am I able to provide management the details they need to know to prove ROI? Also can we prove that demand generation efforts lead to closed deals?

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

• Customer service analysis has been extremely useful for determining sentiment and adding context to real time crisis situations.
• Convenience of pulling data for all social channels at one time is extremely effective in making decisions in real time and to compare against other channel performance. The cross channel export minimizes a great deal of time for exporting data. Nearly all social channel data is available.
• Reports are extremely user friendly, visual and easy to export. Also the ability to see the raw data and to have it for historical reference is great.
• Key insights generated in the dashboard page help add fast context for performance.

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

• While it incorporates MOST platforms not all of them, I believe Pinterest was still in trial. They will need to keep up to date as new platforms emerge.
• Not a super user friendly interface. I found it to be a bit clunky and dated looking.
• While their training was good, and they had good support resources, I think they good do more with marketing and education to help my team uncover more value from the software.

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

For my current client, it's not right - they would not be actionable with the data to really need this tool. For my past clients, I would suggest they stay on it and i think they would agree.

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

The interface is very simple and organized around the core elements of the platform : the reports.

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

Extremely fast response and they go above and beyond without asking. The support team has provided me data beyond our limit before and it was not an issue and not an extra cost, really good business support.

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.

Very good implementation.

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

Simply Measured has more in-depth reports than other tools in this category. Other tools may feature a lower price and are easier to learn. Others focus on only one channel, let's say Twitter. Simply Measured is comprehensive, extensive and has the depth to match. It's one of the few tools that can measure the impact of an individual message as opposed to the account in aggregate.

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 efficiency of reporting. Although I still keep my own spreadsheets and create a few charts and graphs, Simply Measured's reports have saved me countless hours.
• Greater Visibility: Simply Measured's reports have helped increase the visibility of what the social media team is doing. What executive doesn't like a smart report?