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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Shorthand

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AShorthand enables the user to create interactive multimedia stories for any online audience — all with no code. The vendor boasts that Shorthand is used by hundreds of publishers, brands, non-profits, and more — including the BBC, Honda, Business Insider, and Doctors Without Borders.N/A

    Sysomos, now part of Meltwater

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/ASysomos 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
    ShorthandSysomos, now part of Meltwater
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Sysomos
    $1,000.00
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ShorthandSysomos, now part of Meltwater
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    ShorthandSysomos, now part of Meltwater
    Content Creation
    Comparison of Content Creation features of Shorthand and Sysomos, now part of Meltwater
    Feature
    Shorthand
    9.0
    1 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Sysomos, now part of Meltwater
    -
    Ratings
    Content collaboration9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Publishing
    Comparison of Content Publishing features of Shorthand and Sysomos, now part of Meltwater
    Feature
    Shorthand
    6.8
    1 Ratings
    14% below category average
    Sysomos, now part of Meltwater
    -
    Ratings
    Content hub9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Embedded CTAs7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content distribution6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content promotion5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
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    ShorthandSysomos, now part of Meltwater
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    User Ratings
    ShorthandSysomos, now part of Meltwater
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (46 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.8
    (28 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (5 ratings)
    Performance
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.5
    (5 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    2.0
    (8 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.6
    (2 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (8 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ShorthandSysomos, now part of Meltwater
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Shorthand
    Shorthand is ideally suited to visual stories where you have a good number of images and/or embeds or video to include. It is well-suited to long-form stories, where you wish to keep the readers' attention longer than usual. It can help to differentiate particularly important or intriguing stories from others on your website - and for this reason, it could be used as a premium content tool, perhaps for subscribers. It can also be used to showcase stories about awards you've organised, giving them special treatment. It is less suited to breaking news, or very time-sensitive news stories, as it can take some time to prepare, post or update shorthand stories. And it doesn't work well for stories with strong accompanying imagery
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Shorthand
    • Enabling visual storytelling with multiple pictures
    • Embedding rich media within a story, including video
    • Engaging readers for longer than average dwell times
    • Making it easy to create striking article design without coding experience
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Shorthand
    • Additional flexibility in how text is overlaid on pictures would be welcome so that there are more choices on what images to use with particular layouts
    • Enabling users to control the path of text - for example, enabling runaround - could enable some excellent designs
    • Adding additional section templates could speed up design
    • More flexibility in caption placement would be helpful
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Shorthand
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Shorthand
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Shorthand
    I have never known it to be down during my use of it. All you require is an internet connection to log in and you can use it on multiple devices. Adding ease of accessibility, there are simple ways to log in. I've also never known a Shorthand story to go down once live on our site.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Not really an availability issue, but concurrency licensing rules mean that only one user can be logged in at a time.
    Read full review
    Performance
    Shorthand
    Due to the integration with our content management software, there is a short delay on our site while it loads, which may cause some readers to drift away. However, I've seen other sites where it instantly loads articles, so I believe this to be down to the content management software behind our site more than Shorthand itself. Once that brief initial period is over, it doesn't require additional loading time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    This has not been an issue. It is actually beating TweetDeck when we are tagged within a post that TweetDeck is monitoring.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Shorthand
    No answers on this topic
    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."
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Shorthand
    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.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Shorthand
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    Implementation was so easy I dont even remember it!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Shorthand
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Shorthand
    As a web-based service, it is easy for users to log into from anywhere. Content can easily be shared, as you can set up teams that enable access to each other's work as required. And content can be reviewed by others before publication using the sharing function. You can also view how an article will look on different devices.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Shorthand
    • Helped us create one of our top 10 most-read and most-shared stories in the last year
    • Enabled us to elevate key pieces of content, boosting dwell time on our site
    • But can also be time-consuming to adopt for some stories, meaning you need to choose well what stories really deserve the investment in time
    • Boosted collaboration between teams via its ability to share, including offering the chance for others to preview content prior to publication
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Shorthand Screenshots

    Screenshot of Easily add sections and adjust styling.

    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.