Critical Mention vs. Sysomos, now part of Meltwater

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Critical Mention
Score 5.2 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
Sysomos, now part of Meltwater
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Sysomos was a social media listening and marketing solution for content discovery, planning, publishing, moderation, and analytics. Sysomos was acquired by Meltwater, and is no longer available, but the features of the former Sysomos are now part of the Meltwater platform.
$1,000
per month
Pricing
Critical MentionSysomos, now part of Meltwater
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Sysomos
$1,000.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Critical MentionSysomos, now part of Meltwater
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 MentionSysomos, now part of Meltwater
Top Pros
Top Cons
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Critical MentionSysomos, now part of Meltwater
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Mention
Mention
Score 9.4 out of 10
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User Ratings
Critical MentionSysomos, now part of Meltwater
Likelihood to Recommend
1.9
(21 ratings)
7.0
(46 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(7 ratings)
6.8
(28 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(5 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
2.0
(8 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
User Testimonials
Critical MentionSysomos, now part of Meltwater
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.
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Discontinued Products
Sysomos Expion is best suited, in my opinion, to offices where either you have only one moderator/manager OR where multiple users plan to manage a specific channel. Without live updates, it gets far too complicated for multiple users to manage the exact same workload
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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.
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Discontinued Products
  • Ad-hoc research. During planning phase of a campaign it is a helpful tool to understand the marketplace, key influencers and topics that engage a target demographic.
  • Post-event hashtag analysis. Rapid generation of reporting on efficacy of a campaign, key voices, topics that resonated, viral reach and more.
  • User interface. Friendly and accessible enough to minimize training needs and enable decentralized access, though we have found some hand-holding is still required to get the most out of the platform.
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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.
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Discontinued Products
  • It does not provide a visual for volume over time.
  • The visuals aren't excellent, and would require an export to create better looking graphics.
  • The interface isn't intuitive and sometimes requires clicking around to find things that seem like they should be under a different title.
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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
There are two differentiating features that Sysomos MAP has that the competitor tools I have experienced (Radian6, Meltwater Buzz) did not: user-friendly Boolean queries for searches and near-real-time results. The former is important because, of course, your results are only as good as your search/campaign. With Sysomos, once you master Boolean queries (which isn't terribly difficult) you're set for creating any kind of listening report. I strongly prefer this to the "campaign creator" forms that other services provide. Second, Sysomos MAP returns results almost immediately - like a Google search. So if you get your results and see that you need to tweak your query - no big deal. Or if you have a last-minute request for a client - not an issue. Meltwater can take up to 48 hours for a search to fully populate. This is a major issue if you get your full set of results back and see that you need to adjust the query; you're looking at another two days of wait time. A long wait on results can also prove problematic in agency settings where clients or prospective clients often need results with a quick turnaround.
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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
The product is very easy to use. The platform is visual and data is easy to read. Boolean construction can sometimes be difficult, but the boolean constructor tool is helpful for boolean beginners. For more experienced boolean constructors, the boolean display at the top is very helpful in identifying where there may be holes in the construction
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Reliability and Availability
Critical Mention
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
Not really an availability issue, but concurrency licensing rules mean that only one user can be logged in at a time.
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Performance
Critical Mention
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
This has not been an issue. It is actually beating TweetDeck when we are tagged within a post that TweetDeck is monitoring.
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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
Unfortunately, we have not had a great experience with customer support from Klear. In the sales process, they were very responsive and helpful, but when onboarded, it definitely changed. We are based in the US and our customer service rep is based in Israel, meaning our work hours barely overlap. Oftentimes we're waiting 24+ hours for a response, and when it's a time-sensitive issue (like the platform not pulling in Instagram Story data) we want it to be resolved as quickly as possible. Klear also has a chat feature for more immediate help, but we've experienced a similar situation there where it takes 12+ hours to get a response and it's usually from our customer service rep. Our rep is very nice, but also doesn't seem very knowledgeable about the platform, and usually can't provide an immediate answer to a question we ask and has to "check with her team."
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Online Training
Critical Mention
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
We had a kick-off training with the whole team where they walked us through the functionality. This was a pretty effective and comprehensive training.
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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 so easy I dont even remember it!
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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
We've used Sprout Social & Hootsuite in the past -- and they all stack up pretty evenly. Sysomos has the same features as Sprout or Hootsuite, except their reports and analytics are a little more detailed. Hootsuite has a better social media management software and dashboard though
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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
  • Lowered costs and overhead when Expion got introduced as we now use one centralized solution for all of our social media work
  • We can finally calculate ROI with ease and understand our campaign performance through proper tracking and analytics
  • Competition tracking was never easier
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ScreenShots

Sysomos, now part of Meltwater Screenshots

Screenshot of TOP CONTENT: See the best performing content from all your social media channels in one view plus compare it against your competitors’ pages.Screenshot of FAN MODERATION: Sysomos Expion makes it easy to know who to speak to, when to engage in conversation and can even be integrated with customer care centers.Screenshot of PUBLISH: Easily plan, schedule and publish content from a simple drag-and-drop calendar with workflow that’s easy to track and review.Screenshot of OPTIMIZE PAID ADS: Optimize paid ads with smarter analytics and trending triggers so you can better understand how organic and paid content are working together.Screenshot of DYNAMIC DASHBOARDS: Powerful marketing analytics shows that it’s not just about creating a report or crunching some numbers - but about telling a story.  You’ll discover patterns, breakouts, and trends in real time to capitalize on opportunities.