Critical Mention vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Critical Mention
Score 5.3 out of 10
N/A
Critical Mention headquartered in New York offers their eponymous media monitoring platform for public relations and crisis management.N/A
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Score 5.9 out of 10
N/A
Radian6 was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2011 and - along with Buddy Media - became Salesforce Social Studio. The product is slated to be retired in November 2024.
$1,000
Per Org Per Month
Pricing
Critical MentionSalesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$1,000.00
Per Org Per Month
Pro
$4,000.00
Per Org Per Month
Corporate
$12,000.00
Per Org Per Month
Enterprise
$40,000.00
Per Org Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Critical MentionSalesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Critical MentionSalesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Considered Both Products
Critical Mention
Chose Critical Mention
Critical Mention offers a different value than Radian6. Radian6 helped my client achieve the monitoring that they required, but it didn't capture the news segments like Critical Mention was able to.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Critical MentionSalesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Listening/monitoring
Comparison of Listening/monitoring features of Product A and Product B
Critical Mention
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
8.5
10 Ratings
11% above category average
Boolean keyword searches00 Ratings7.09 Ratings
Filtering out noise/spam00 Ratings7.09 Ratings
Sentiment analysis00 Ratings10.08 Ratings
Broad channel coverage00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
Publishing
Comparison of Publishing features of Product A and Product B
Critical Mention
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
8.5
10 Ratings
7% above category average
Content planning and scheduling00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
Audience targeting00 Ratings8.09 Ratings
Content optimization00 Ratings8.08 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings8.010 Ratings
Engagement
Comparison of Engagement features of Product A and Product B
Critical Mention
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
7.6
9 Ratings
6% below category average
Automated routing and prioritization00 Ratings9.99 Ratings
Customer interaction histories00 Ratings9.99 Ratings
Bulk actions00 Ratings3.19 Ratings
Marketing
Comparison of Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Critical Mention
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
5.5
9 Ratings
33% below category average
Lead generation00 Ratings5.08 Ratings
Content marketing00 Ratings5.09 Ratings
Paid media management00 Ratings6.07 Ratings
Campaigns and promotions00 Ratings6.08 Ratings
Channel coverage/integration
Comparison of Channel coverage/integration features of Product A and Product B
Critical Mention
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
8.1
10 Ratings
5% below category average
Twitter00 Ratings9.010 Ratings
Facebook00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
LinkedIn00 Ratings10.08 Ratings
Google+00 Ratings6.86 Ratings
Instagram00 Ratings8.07 Ratings
Pinterest00 Ratings6.54 Ratings
YouTube00 Ratings6.76 Ratings
Reporting/analytics
Comparison of Reporting/analytics features of Product A and Product B
Critical Mention
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
8.6
9 Ratings
9% above category average
Campaign success analytics00 Ratings8.99 Ratings
Real-time tracking00 Ratings7.09 Ratings
Competitor analysis00 Ratings9.97 Ratings
Account management
Comparison of Account management features of Product A and Product B
Critical Mention
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
9.5
9 Ratings
16% above category average
Role-based user permissions & privileges00 Ratings9.08 Ratings
Mobile access00 Ratings9.99 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Critical MentionSalesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Small Businesses
Newswire
Newswire
Score 8.3 out of 10
Publer
Publer
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Newswire
Newswire
Score 8.3 out of 10
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Social Suite by Reputation.com
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Critical MentionSalesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Likelihood to Recommend
1.8
(21 ratings)
8.9
(51 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(7 ratings)
8.8
(38 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.6
(5 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(6 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.8
(6 ratings)
User Testimonials
Critical MentionSalesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Likelihood to Recommend
Critical Mention
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
If you're tasked with publishing content to social on behalf of your organization then this tool is certainly worth considering. You have quick and easy capability to schedule across multiple platforms with drag-and-drop simplicity. It ties into Salesforce's real strength of its CRM platform so you can quickly tie social activity and leads to those already in your database. And it does a good job at monitoring and analyzing brand and competitor content across multiple media types. Having said that, if you're into deep-dive and full functionality SaaS tools then this might not be for you as it covers three areas adequately, but not in enough detail or strength to make it a star performer
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Pros
Critical Mention
  • 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
Discontinued Products
  • The amount of the information that radian6 can pull from multiple social platforms is absolutely phenomenal. Its just not only the pull but the way the information can be presented in dashboards was way good. It helped us understand in various aspects of our social presence.
  • Multiple profiles helped us to break down the Big/Huge social buzz cloud to smaller and more manageable pieces. This helped us concentrate on the lows and helped us to plan better on turning them to highs.
  • Radian6 allowed us to follow thru the crowd trends with the latest information presented in a single view. This also helped us to collect the social opinion on the product releases.
  • The ease of use, one need not be an expert to start using this platform. The interface is easily understandable by anyone.
  • A keyword can be edited quickly to tailor the needs and the results were quick.
Read full review
Cons
Critical Mention
  • 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
Discontinued Products
  • Instagram Social Listening - it currently does not offer much social listening in terms of Instagram.
  • Instagram Owned - It currently stops pulling once an update is "old" by their standards, even if it receives recent comments. They can force pull, but you have to work with their tech team to do so.
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Likelihood to Renew
Critical Mention
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
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Discontinued Products
I spent a lot of time researching the right platform for me and our organisation (thanks to the other reviews on TrustRadius also). Having used other platforms when I found frustrations getting my everyday work done, I knew exactly what I wanted and this is why I chose Social Studio. While there have been a few hiccups, the quarterly update releases and the outstanding tech support have kept me more than happy.
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Usability
Critical Mention
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
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Discontinued Products
• Would rate this a 6. The User Interface is pretty intuitive, but the platform was still considered pretty intimidating by our non-technical staff when they first saw it. It took a while to get used to it and feel comfortable. There was quite a lot of setup work in the beginning (for example, we had to build our own reports using a canned report as a template, and this was not simple). Although it took a while to get it setup correctly, it’s quite intuitive once that work has been done.
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Reliability and Availability
Critical Mention
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
The platform is rarely down
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Performance
Critical Mention
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No issues with performance.
Read full review
Support Rating
Critical Mention
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.
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Discontinued Products
As mentioned previously, it can be hard to get through to people who can help you. On occasion when I have spoken to customer service/tech support, they all seem nice and try to be helpful, however instead of admitting the system cannot do certain things, they will persist it saying that it can, which results in many wasted hours overall.
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Online Training
Critical Mention
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
• We initially received dedicated online training for our team which was delivered by our account rep. This was pretty effective since it happened after our data had been loaded into the system and it had been configured for specific needs our organization. The training was perhaps a bit shallow though, as it was only an hour long. Online videos are available to be taken individually, and these have been useful.
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Implementation Rating
Critical Mention
Critical Mention implementation was easy and fast. Their support and training were awesome.
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Discontinued Products
Implementation was pretty simple. Just a matter of giving the account rep a list of our search terms and having him set the system up to pull the data we wanted to see. Once this had been done, we tweaked it with his help. Process was pretty smooth, although there was some back and forth until it worked the way we wanted.
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Alternatives Considered
Critical Mention
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
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Discontinued Products
Compared to Radian6, I found Meltwater Buzz, Simply Measured, and Sprout Social to be much more user friendly. Meltwater Buzz and Radian6 are very similar products with many of the same functionalities but Buzz presents your analytics in a way that is much easier to understand. I did a two week trial with Sprout Social and absolutely loved the product but our company needed the capability to connect to Salesforce, which is available on R6 and Buzz. Simply Measured is my all time favorite but I have only used the free version so I am not completely sure how it stacks up to Radian6
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Return on Investment
Critical Mention
  • 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.
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Discontinued Products
  • Monitoring social brand awareness is not something you can consider to have a meaninful impact in your business ROI short term, however it's a must for taking care of long term relationships and customer intimacy.
  • Radian6 connects with other analytical tools like webtrends, Google Analytics, etc..however it's not directly linked to a revenue driven platform, you can´t see the immediate ROI generated in the tool.
  • If you bet for social relationships you should consider this tool, no question on that. Social Commerce might be of course impacted postively by the proper use of this tool.
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ScreenShots