Crowdbooster (discontinued) vs. Viralheat (Discontinued)

Before recommending Crowdbooster, I'd want to know what goals they hope to accomplish with the software. Then I would want them to specifically identify what types of metrics would be most useful to their program. If they specifically need to report out on how many people in a certain location they reached, this isn't the right fit. If they are using other tools, there may be duplication. However, if they are currently using more budget-friendly solutions or just getting started with a new program, Crowdbooster is a perfect fit. It will help you to grow your program and is flexible enough to accommodate your needs.

If social is a big part of your business in more departments than just marketing and communications (marcom), make sure to let the team know and ask how Viralheat can accommodate multiple users and departments. Viralheat was great during the evaluation process because they were willing to show us exactly what they could do for our company - they even customized accounts for us to show us the true value of signing on.

• Timed social media posts - Crowdbooster provides the opportunity to schedule social media posts allowing you to work on other important social media tasks.
• Simply beautiful tracking - There are millions of ways to measure social media impact. Crowdbooster offers the most important and relevant measurements in simplified charts..
• Great UI - Crappy UI = crappy experience. Crowdbooster's UI is easy to navigate. It won't take months to learn where all the buttons are.

• Viralheat’s reporting feature delivers analytics in presentation-grade spreadsheets. I include these images in reports or presentations to different teams.
• Monitoring is definitely a strong point. I am not limited by a conversation or mention limitation, which is especially important when tracking high-volume products or brands. We are able to quickly identify trends and act accordingly.
• The user experience is a pleasant one. Viralheat offers many comprehensive features but the layout of the product is simple and intuitive. I’m able to access any feature without having to click around into multiple places.

• The ranked order of twitter followers and the number of "tweet impressions" did not help that much. Those "tweet impressions" were not really an estimate of how many people were actually reading my tweet. It was simply a sum of followers of the person retweeting a tweet and the sum of all followers from a subsequent retweet of the initial retweet. All this told me was the best case scenario I could expect if ALL followers of a person that retweeted saw my tweet. This is not a true measure of "twitter footprint" – since the “signal to noise” ratio in Twitter is very low.
• There was no system in place to track "clicked links" for links embedded in tweets and/or facebook wall posts. Hootsuite did a good job of this – but only for twitter.
• The list of recommended times to tweet were always "on the hour" (i.e. 10 a.m, 1 p.m.). Never were the times ever at "half past the hour" etc. An independent study that I did on my own using Google Analytics (and campaign links using google's URL builder) helped me determine that my optimal "Tweet time" during the week is 3:30 p.m. ET. More importantly, the recommended times seemed to be roughly the same on the weekends - which I find strange given that social media behavior does change on the weekends.
• Occasionally, in my facebook ranked table of "loyal fans", I would see people in there that had not "liked" or "commented" on a post for months at a stretch and the "look back" period of the table was only around 7 days or so. Hence, I occasionally had to question the accuracy of that table.

• Not being able to reference in the native platform (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook) the name of companies or users referenced in a post.
• Not being able to embed images natively. (e.g. Image attached to a post on Viralheat shows up as a url link on the native platform).
• Would love to see a calendar view of the scheduled posts as well as the current list view.

Simple to use and a great value for what it offers. It has a simple but clean interface and it provides fantastic historical data you can use to measure your efforts online. By using a tool like Crowdbooster, you can see what is working with your audience and what isn't. From there, you can start tweaking your strategies

Viralheat provided our team with the kind of monitoring tool we were looking for. As an added bonus, they had a member of their team brainstorm the best ways for us to set up our account to ensure we weren’t missing anything. Great customer service.

I found it fairly intuitive and easy to use. The information is laid out cleanly, and the most important information appears at a glance on the home page. However, I have worked with other users who had a hard time switching between platforms and identifying where other information was buried. It's not always clear that something is a clickable button! The option to export results is also a bit buried, and not integrated with the date range option.

I found it really easy to use and I use it on a daily basis and can easily find my way around. It has the usability of a consumer application for an Enterprise product that does very complex things in a very elegant manner.

I do not think it is as supported as it once was when it first arrived on the social media scene. It is an older platform whose main functionality may have already ran its course.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

The customer success team clearly cares about how well we do. They are quick to get back to us and they always offer to jump on a screen share so we can understand and learn new features.

If you can demo a free trial, that is definitely the best way to see if this will fit your program's specific needs.

We were up and running within an hour.

It is a platform that is singularly focused. It does not have a lot of the additions that come stock with other platforms such as robust reporting or deeper insights past schedule times. It is also a stand-alone platform and a lot of its primary functionality can be found in more encompassing platforms.

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info

We chose Viralheat because it allowed us to do multiple things from one tool. We were able to monitor our brand mentions after each video, song, or album release - this provided us with valuable feedback abouout our brand and music. We were also able to connect our accounts and engage directly with our fans as well as post new content. We monitored the analytics around each release and campaign and were able to determine which were successful.

• Increased efficiency. I am able to generate useful snapshot reports in seconds. Particularly useful when you need answers fast (such as on a phone call).
• Peace of mind. I am able to compare the data in Crowdbooster to what is exported from Facebook and Twitter.
• Quicker, simpler evaluation of results. I am able to more easily compare impressions with engagement data to see what is working, and what should change. Particularly useful in day-to-day analysis.

• Viralheat has helped me understand how real-life users react to things I build and/or test.
• I’ve gotten a better understanding of my space and the relevant news surrounding it. This helps me build a better product.
• It saves me a lot of time. I’m able to quickly monitor what’s important to me.