Likelihood to Recommend Critical Mention is great for schools/businesses/etc. that want to know when they are in the news. Sometimes a brand's reputation can suffer greatly if you are not aware of an issue that was posted by a competitor or media outlet If you are not in the news a lot, there is no need for this product.
Tom McGuire Director Of Communications (and Media Relations)
Read full review I really like that I can just go into hootsuite, connect all the our social channels and be able to have a great overview on what our social feeds look like. It's super handy not having to spend time going into each social platform to do the same post, and I can spend one day scheduling out that month's social plan. I much prefer sorting out boosting post from Hootsuite, the only downside is that they have a limit to what you can boost a month so a lot of the time I have to grin and bear it and use Meta Business Suite instead for boosting posts.
Read full review Pros Critical Mention's customer service is excellent. Any time we've had a challenge finding a clip or anything, they are on top of it and go above and beyond to make sure we have what we are looking for quickly. The ability to create tailored clips of each mention and quickly share them is unparalleled. The reporting feature is fantastic. It makes it very simple to pull detailed reports and share them with interested parties. Read full review Scheduling of content. The ease of use for Hootsuite's planner abilities is top of the industry. It is simple and effective in posting content to different channels and accounts. Analytics are superior on Hootsuite. Their custom reports allow you to view very specific KPI's that you can adjust for each channel or account. The reports are also exportable to be used for others in the company. Inbox management. The inbox manager is superior to any in the industry. Hootsuite allows you to tag certain phrases or keywords to better filter messages based on importance or topic. Read full review Cons I believe the one frustration I have with searching in general that if the closed captioning is not correct on the broadcast end Critical Mention will miss that data. Which is not a Critical Mention issue and does overcome depending on the search. Also, it would be great if you wanted to capture a complete 30 minutes newscast, it could be done by using the search. The clips need to be about to handle 30-minute programs. One nagging issue when using Critical Mention is that it does not save e-mail addresses when sending a report and this requires a waste of time having to type in e-mails that should be able to be pulled from the customers' contacts. Also, it would be great if you wanted to capture a complete 30 minutes newscast, it could be done by using the search. The clips need to be able to handle 30-minute programs. Read full review Because of the way algorithms works, we would have loved to be able to automate making a post with no link and posting the first comment with a link (hello LinkedIn) We would have loved an easy way to post from a main account and repost the post for other accounts we administrate, for instance a corporate post reposted by individuals for LinkedIn, or retweets from one main account by child accounts Read full review Likelihood to Renew I gave this a 5 only because I do not make the decisions to renew. When I used this at my previous company, I also recommended to the decision maker to renew this tool as it was a crucial piece to the overall client objective
Read full review At this time we are satisfied that Hootsuite offers the most of what we are looking for at the most reasonable price point. As the social media landscape and monitoring/scheduling software changes, so do our needs. We re-evaluate our tools semi-annually or as new tools emerge onto the market. If we find at any point that we aren't gaining an advantage, then we are open to switching products.
Read full review Usability It's great for quickly looking up a specific clip, but this platform makes it difficult to select and accurately report on a high volume of clips
Read full review Hootsuite is probably the easiest to use social media scheduler of all the ones that I've used. It's been easy to teach clients how to use the software themselves and it can be accessed easily on anyone's phone through their mobile app. Highly recommend for anyone that wants a software that is easy to learn!
Read full review Reliability and Availability Any outages are communicated in advance and have not been a problem. We let our clients know based on communications from HootSuite. Since we operate 24/7 with multiple shifts, planned outages can interfere with our operations, but we can always work around it.
Read full review Performance Hootsuite makes passing on articles from the web very easy- when it works! I have had a number of gliches with Chrome where it does not open properly and the solution (after some toing and froing with support) was to uninstall and reinstall. The support staff are always very helpful (which is great!) but the gliches..... well, they suck when you are already busy!
Read full review Support Rating Look, Critical Mention follows up on an or phone call immediately or in the AM the following business day. I have called them after hours and get a live person to work through any issues that may have come up. Support seems to be job one with Critical Mention.
Read full review I can manage all of my accounts on one site! It's absolutely amazing! The dashboard is helpful to see how you are doing as well. Still getting to understand the analytics and may need to reach out for help on this
Read full review In-Person Training Very easy to teach and learn
Read full review Online Training The online training is decent; however, it takes a lot more time to search for answers to my questions. Having a training session with a live person was much more effective as they were able to quickly address the business needs I have.
Read full review Implementation Rating Critical Mention implementation was easy and fast. Their support and training were awesome.
Read full review • Combination of vendor and internal. The vendor bumped up our account to the Enterprise version (quite simple and easy) and then set up our organization and team structure. We then had to log in and set up team members and assign members to social media accounts. This was pretty easy to do as they have a great user interface. We simply had to drag and drop people into the correct team giving them access to specific social media accounts.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Burrelles is confusing and outdated. Critical Mention works on the side of the account team and understands our needs better. I was able to share hundreds of outlets that I wanted to be included in my online search and Critical Mention added all of them in less than a day I was seeing better results in my searches. The possibilities with Burrelles seem limited while Critical Mention's online monitoring service really lets me craft reports the way I want to
Read full review Hootsuite's free account was sufficient for use on behalf of our client. When they restructured their pricing model and eliminated free and affordable subscriptions suitable for a small business, we found that
Zoho Social was an excellent replacement. The interface was simpler and the pricing was affordable and suitable for a small business.
Read full review Scalability We are only using in marketing and have been able to scale.
Read full review Return on Investment Every week the department I am a part does dozens of searches on Critical Mention. We use it as our primary search engine for all things broadcast. One negative aspect is that we do not know where Critical Mention gets their audience viewing numbers from so we just have to take it as their word. Another negative aspect is that we are limited on the amount of time that one clip can be so we have to share several clips of the same show with our clients. Read full review I have been able to evaluate which posts, in general, do well and figure out what types of posts to make (content) It's been harder however to compare on social medial platform compared to another because it's hard to duplicate a post with a new owly (I think you used to be able to) but more so, you also can't assign it a custom owly link so I can see at a glance which owly link was associated with what platform. HEIDI KAY Director of Social Media and Brand Management
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