Likelihood to Recommend Best suited for a marketer that cares about reports, needs a social media management platform and doesn't want to pay more for a more aesthetically pleasing version of a platform with the same or less functionality, such as Hootsuite or
Sprout Social . For a social media marketer that wants to automate some of their postings, the queues feature is great for this functionality. Not best suited for beginners to social media, as their platform is best utilized with someone familiar with the industry that knows what they are doing. Their chat support team is very good though, but this type of individual might find themselves spending a lot of time on the platform.
Read full review Meltwater is well-suited for agencies that have an engagement team who is looking to service a variety of client needs such as social media reporting, public relations outreach, and community management. If you're looking to have a platform serve just one need, you can still use Meltwater but will get more bang for your buck if you are needing a variety of tools.
Read full review Pros eClincher supports nearly every social network and connects to a large number of sources (blogs, bit.ly, Google Analytics, Google My Business). This makes workflow tremendously easy. Posting Groups. At higher levels of service, eClincher allows you to set-up individual brand accounts. My agency isn't at that level, so we utilize eClincher's posting groups to make 1-click groups that post to all of the profiles for each client. This allows us to quickly post a cohesive message across all channels. Workflow management: eClincher adds plenty of additional tools to make your workflow fast. Connections to free stock photo services make it easy to add generic pictures to your content. Google Analytics and bit.ly can keep track of statistics and measure success. The Inbox allows you to handle all your clients' accounts from one screen (including comments, messages, reviews, and more). The Feeds and Influencers tabs allow you to understand your market and what's being said. Altogether, eClincher makes a 1-app solution for Social Media Management. Read full review Media research - you can search for relevant publications and journalists to add to your media list. Earned media coverage - you can search for coverage of your brand and find news stories that also include data that may be useful (how many people did the story reach for example). Building media lists - if you have no current existing list, you can build and export one in Excel for example. Read full review Cons It's not very visually appealing, but this is not a dealbreaker. The reporting features could definitely use some work. I still get more value from the native SNS pages, but this is quickly changing. They removed the "export to CSV" functionality, but they plan to reintroduce it soon. As mentioned previously, they really respond to criticism well and update the tool constantly. The inbox could use some work. I don't like being directed offsite to view certain comments deemed "requests for further info" when they could just easily display them there. Read full review The dashboards are not user-friendly, customizable (color, font size, etc.), or worthy of presenting to a client. All of the insights from a dashboard get pulled from the platform and placed into a more client-friendly presentation. Paywalls for certain publications connected to who-knows-what. DowJones racket limits media monitoring capabilities and results in manual searches for a growing number of publications. TVeyes, the broadcast monitoring arm of the media monitoring capabilities, just needs TLC and to become more client-facing. Currently, the links produced to share clips look sketchy, and they have a relatively short shelf life. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Unless the price of eClincher moves to a point where it is too much to justify, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't continue to use eClincher for our agency. The value at this price-point is unbelievable and we'd be foolish to move to a pricier program purely for the sake of slicker graphics or UI. eClinchers pricing is fantastic, and is only matched by its functionality—it matches or beats any of the major Social Media Manager SaaS programs out there for a fraction of the cost. This tool is great for growing agencies, but would also be useful for any marketing department or large agency that wants to streamline their social media workflow.
Read full review Meltwater works well for our organization and has allowed us to meet our internal goals. We are always open to new products and services that may be able to provide similar or better features; however, our experience has been that many of Meltwater's competitors are not up to the task.
Read full review Usability Its usability was good until they changed their plans and stopped their LTD program for its early adopters who helped raise the tool by giving it positive reviews. I don't think eClincher is ethical in any sense based on the recent actions.
Read full review Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.
Read full review Support Rating [In my experience,] due to the fact that they did a bait and switch on their plans and blamed AppSumo for the lifetime program ending is simply wrong. [I believe that] it's unethical to get support and reviews from their early adopters then take the plan away later.
Read full review Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.
Read full review In-Person Training Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.
Read full review Online Training Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.
Read full review Implementation Rating Be patient. eClincher isn't perfect and has some software issues. These issues will be exacerbated if you get frustrated or have a slow connection. If something "breaks" or locks up, just refresh the page and re-do that step. It may take your team a couple weeks to get use to using the new system. Once they've gotten the hang of it, I'm sure they'll love the amount of time they save. I'd recommend taking your time with the set-up. Though there aren't a lot of steps to get everything squared away, you can break the process into small chunks to make sure you're managing your time. To just hook-up all the social accounts, it may only take an hour or so. But, if you want to set-up all the extra tools (such as user accounts, listening feeds, posting groups, schedules, etc.) it'll take longer. I think it took around a day to set-up completely, but your mileage my vary.
Read full review You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.
Read full review Alternatives Considered There are loads of social scheduling tools out there. I was using Buffer but then found it was limited in terms of listening and reporting so I started to look at a more professional software. I tried
Hootsuite but hated the interface, way too busy with the primary focus being on feeds rather than scheduling.
Sprout Social I found clunky and hard to use. eClincher was recommended to me by a friend. I think the interface (desktop and mobile) is easy to use but what sets it apart is its support - the live chat is brilliant.
Read full review I was looking for a full-service option. I did some research. What really sold me was the presentation. They offered products that were helpful, and I wasn’t even aware of them. It is more expensive than the other products that are out there, but you get more. The other companies are good, but Meltwater Media Intelligence is more full service.
Read full review Return on Investment Makes it much easier to manage our social publishing Makes it much easier to manage our social engagement Makes it much easier to manage our social reporting Read full review As a PR firm, we rely on the media databases that [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform] supplies to deliver the media exposure that they expect from us. We utilize their tracking of media hits for our overall reporting to our clients. Both of these are advantageous in helping us to not only keep our existing clients happy but also to gain new clients (and, in turn - revenue), as well. Read full review ScreenShots