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Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)
Formerly Radian6 + Buddy Media

Overview

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)?

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.

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Recent Reviews
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Popular Features

View all 27 features
  • Content planning and scheduling (10)
    10.0
    100%
  • Broad channel coverage (10)
    10.0
    100%
  • Twitter (10)
    9.0
    90%
  • Workflow management (10)
    8.0
    80%
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Pricing

View all pricing

Basic

$1,000.00

Cloud
Per Org Per Month

Pro

$4,000.00

Cloud
Per Org Per Month

Corporate

$12,000.00

Cloud
Per Org Per Month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Features

Listening/monitoring

Using complex keyword searches to surface insights from social media conversations.

8.5
Avg 7.6

Publishing

Scheduling posts to various social media channels and profiles from one interface.

8.5
Avg 8.0

Engagement

Engaging with customers and responding to comments and inquiries via social media channels.

7.6
Avg 8.1

Marketing

Using the software to increase customer engagement and grow customer base via social media channels.

5.5
Avg 7.7

Channel coverage/integration

Effective integration with social media networks, including the ability to monitor, publish and respond.

8.1
Avg 8.5

Reporting/analytics

8.6
Avg 7.9

Account management

Users can manage access to multiple social media accounts.

9.5
Avg 8.1
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Product Details

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring)?

Social Studio (formerly Radian6 and Buddy Media) enables users to listen, engage, and publish within a social media marketing and management suite — and connect enriched social data to marketing with sales and service. Social Studio was the result of Salesforce' combining of Radian6 with the capabilities of Buddy Media, a social media publishing tool acquired by Salesforce in 2012. Social Studio is slated to be retired in November of 2024.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring) Competitors

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring) Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Bottlenose, Brandwatch, and Verint Messaging are common alternatives for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring).

Reviewers rate Sentiment analysis and Broad channel coverage and Content planning and scheduling highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring) are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(149)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
November 04, 2014

Radian6 Review

Verified User
Strategist in Marketing
Marketing and Advertising Company, 51-200 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • The ability to dive into data various ways and bring user directly to source of mention. I love the ability to look at data and dig into the data. For example, looking at Topic Trends and then being able to dive into the River of News from a specific point in the Topic Trends. Another way would be to look at the keyword groups, dive into media type and then dive into a specific media type for more detailed data about Twitter or Forums specifically.
  • I really like the art of the Keyword Configuration and ability to filter noise.
  • Number of sources covered. One of the things I love about the tool is the ability to crawl so many sources including social media sites, blogs, mainstream news, forums, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and more. The tool covers over 650 million sources of data the last rep I talked to in late July, 2013.
  • Ability to train multiple users across the organization.
  • I really like the Engagement Console workflow and use the feature to delegate mentions to the appropriate stakeholders. I also like to flag and prioritize mentions among team members. We can also respond to mentions from the tool specifically if we need to.
  • Provide insights based on data.
  • Customize Reports. Many times, I would like to see data a specific way. Currently, this tool does not allow me to custom build a report in the tool to send to my managers. I will need to export data and create my own dashboard based on the data I would like to see. The Summary Dashboard does not provide me the reporting I need.
  • Sentiment could be improved.
Likelihood to Recommend
Return on Investment
  • Turning data into actionable insights across the organization.
  • Using custom reports to gain more budget for paid media and other areas.
Alternatives Considered
We evaluate up to five listening tools every year and each has their pros and cons. Radian6 satisfied our needs in reporting, insights and the representation of the data. We also liked the amount of data the tool could pull conversations from. We found this tool had the ability to capture a wide range of sources for mentions.
Users and Roles
4
Analytics, Marketing Strategy and Internal Marketing
Support Headcount Required
2
Analysts and Strategists.
Business Processes Supported
  • Listening for mentions of the brand, industry and competition.
  • Based on insights determining what actions should be made for the product, company or brand.
Likelihood to Renew
9
I am trained, comfortable and understand how to use the tool to its full potential.
Products Replaced
We were not currently investing in a listening tool.
Implementation Details / Implementation Partner
  • Implemented in-house
Our company, Sundog can provide implementation. www.sundoginteractive.com.
Implementation Rating
10
It's an ongoing process to filter noise and optimize the keyword configuration to its fullest potential.
Training Types Used
  • Online training
  • Self-taught
Online Training
8
Love the live webinars and schedules.
Ease of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio (retiring) Training
Yes and No. I believe the live webinars are needed and then time needs to be dedicated to self-train or work with a team who has additional training.
Support Rating
8
I really love the overall support process for Radian6; however have had some communication issues with some reps to clarify understanding at times.. I find the overall process of this tool's support great. I would like the Account Reps and Customer Service Reps to be more knowledgeable once I get to them. Sometimes, it takes a few times to connect before an issue is solved.
Premium Support
No
We have a team in-house.
Usability
9
Very easy to use and find valuable mentions.
Reliability and Availability
9
Performance
9
Could vary based on your internet connection.
Systems Integrated With
  • Google Analytics
  • Omniture
Future Integration Plans
  • Salesforce
Salesforce is an ongoing project to identify and build social profiles.
April 05, 2013

Expensive to scale listening. Other tools better for engagement.

Verified User
Manager in Marketing
Computer Software Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • Localized, keyword, social media monitoring
  • The product had lot of "noise" despite filters; no easy integration with social intranet and natural employee workflow; standalone system.
  • We needed a tool that integrated with our social intranet (in this case Jive).
  • Additionally, we wanted workflow capability that would provide a clear process for all employees to follow, and not something we would have to buy an individual license for every user. It was crucially important to collect and filter the data, and then assign it to the right people within the organization to respond.
Likelihood to Recommend
Overall, it was an ok tool for a standalone PR team; however, to do social monitoring across teams, other tools are better. It was also not as good as tools like Spredfast for engagement.

Radian6 is really built for listening to conversations, but Spredfast is built for engaging on the most important items. Radian6 might actually have more advanced listening filters (ie. Language); however, Spredfast is built for taking action, participating on conversations, and sharing relevant materials.
Return on Investment
  • brand mentions and awareness tracking
Alternatives Considered
Did a brief evaluation of other tools, but at the time, Radian 6 was the industry leader.
Users and Roles
5
Marketing
Public Relations
Product Management
Customer Support
Support Headcount Required
1
Business Processes Supported
  • Social media monitoring
Likelihood to Renew
1
I found an alternative solution to be better (first Jive, and then Spredfast because it has a better listening component and engagement capabilities). Radian 6 was expensive to scale. The B2B company I worked for targeted several industries - ie. robotics, medical device design, automotive. Radian6 charged both by keyword and user. It was impossible to scale due to cost restrictions. Therefore, we could only use the tool to monitor and react to certain product keywords and not proactively to get involved in important conversations in various industries.

Instead we went with a service that integrated with our social intranet. This allowed the social team to quickly find internal experts based on their profiles, host a conversation about the social media post internally, and the publish a response back out. This was better than getting user licenses and training thousands of employees on a tool they may only use a few times a year or trying to manage the social media monitoring process via email.
Products Replaced
I switched from free tools such as Google Alerts and TweetDeck to Radian6.
Implementation Rating
10
This is a SaaS product, so getting the product up and running is quite simple.
Training Types Used
  • Online training
Online Training
8
It was simple and efficient.
Support Rating
4
Couldn't ever help solve our spam issue, although they tried.
Premium Support
Yes
Usability
6
It was simple to use, although the filtering process could be improved. We were never really successful in filtering out SPAM.
Reliability and Availability
10
Performance
9
No issues with performance.
Future Integration Plans
  • No
Key Negotiation Points
# keywords, # users
February 12, 2013

Great for Twitter monitoring.

Verified User
Manager in Marketing
Public Relations and Communications Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • We appreciate it's twitter results more than it's other functions. Twitter monitoring is acceptable and translates well to measurement reporting in Social.
  • Social Brand Analytics, Social monitoring & Competitive Analysis
  • FB analytics due to account privacy settings
  • Sentiment analysis
Likelihood to Recommend
Overall Radian 6 is useful. The cons are FB mention data due to user privacy settings and the lack of solid Sentiment analysis
Return on Investment
  • Social Brand Intelligence reporting. This involves monitoring of the client's brand as well as their competitive set. You can determine sentiment of conversation via random sample and can determine the Share of Voice in various media types to include, blogs, twitter & Facebook.
  • Helps develop Social insights through SBA performance, Sentiment and Competitive analysis
  • The alternative to not using this platform of course is to monitor manually. This is both cost prohibitive to the client and requires a large team of hourly billable staff versus one or two individuals using R6 which is less the $1000 per brand profile.
Users and Roles
5
Any staffer from Intern to VP
Support Headcount Required
0
Business Processes Supported
  • For our purposes, we use Radian 6 for Social Listening and it serves as a both a listening and Real-Time monitoring tool and the output / or return provides us with data to produce analytic reports, Social Brand Intelligence as well as data that provides snapshot analytics for Competitor Intel reporting.
Likelihood to Renew
7
We are an agency and make product recommendations to clients on tools depending on what they are trying to achieve. In general, Radian6 is relatively inexpensive and provides great Twitter metrics. There are better platforms for various other tasks i.e. more accurate sentiment measurement, real time monitoring (less lag time), etc.
Products Replaced
I did not switch from another platform. Was the current agency platform when I joined the agency 18 months ago (Aug 2011).
Implementation Details / Implementation Partner
  • Implemented in-house
Implementation Rating
7
Creating a profile for a brand is self service and is time consuming. Training new users is also time consuming and the real experience comes from hours in the cockpit.
Training Types Used
  • Online training
Online Training
7
Training gives quick training but it really comes down to hours in the cockpit
Support Rating
9
They are quick to join a GoTo meeting to walk through the process together and if the issue / question is not resolved / answered they will pass along to the technicians who will respond quickly
Premium Support
Yes
There are often oddities, conflicting data that requires and explaination, etc. The client support that we have experienced has been terrific.
Usability
7
There are certain restrictions to profile creation, key words, and historical data only goes back 90 days. More $$ if you want increased historical data
Reliability and Availability
9
The platform is rarely down
Performance
8
There is a delay which makes real-time monitoring a bit more difficult but overall it's performance is decent
Future Integration Plans
  • BuddyMedia CMS
Yes. The Buddy Media integration with Radian 6 is now called Marketing Cloud. It combines the Radian 6 listening tool with a CRM tool. This allows the user to listen, manage and respond via social using one platform.
Key Negotiation Points
The terms are on a client / brand profile basis. Believe it is currently a $800 / profile for agency
November 12, 2012

Need an analytics person on staff to reap full value.

Verified User
Director in Marketing
Non-Profit Organization Management Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pros and Cons
  • Software is really powerful, but does require some staff members who have a passion for analytics who are able to analyze the data and figure out appropriate engagement strategies. The tool certainly supplied highly relevant data, but it requires someone with an analytics background to spend a considerable portion of their time figuring out what actions to take based on that data.
  • Product has a great UI, and is quite flexible, but it is a bit overwhelming. We have only started to scratch the surface of what the platform actually does. There is a lot of functionality that we don’t even use yet.
  • Even with the nonprofit discount, the software is still quite expensive and there are limits to the amount of data that we can pull into the system. Pricing plans have data ceilings based on the number of topic profiles and mentions we pull into the system. Exceeding those limits incurs quite a bit of extra cost. For example, we would love to monitor supporters of peer organizations, but it is too expensive for us to do that.
  • We use Small Act Thrive for scheduling (and are interested in future functionality from Thrive allowing us to cross-reference social activity with our donor file). However, it would be nice if we could do everything in a single tool. I'm not actually sure if Radian6 allows for scheduling.
Likelihood to Recommend
Return on Investment
  • The software does a fantastic job of letting us understand who are top social supporters are. It would be impossible to understand this without Radian6. We now know who shares our content and helps us grow virally. Knowing who these people are is crucial to the success of the organization. Our marketing team understands who among our supporters can help us grow, and which messages resonate the most.
Users and Roles
5
• We have five logins. Mainly used by our social media manager and some members of the digital marketing team (to promote marketing campaigns) • Usage varies a bit depending on the phases we are in. For example, during campaign execution and analysis, we use the tool daily. Otherwise we check metrics about once a week. We also use the tool heavily at month end for reporting and analysis.
Support Headcount Required
0
Business Processes Supported
  • We use the tool mainly to monitor what is being said about us and to indentify who our top influencers are. We really want to know who is tweeting about our campaigns, sharing our content etc. Once we have identified top influencers, we reach out to them for engagement using other channels (email / blogs).
  • In a nutshell, we use the tool to ID our brand promoters. The software definitely helps us to solve the problem we purchased it to solve. The only real problem is on our side. We do not have adequate resources to really analyze the data that Radian 6 returns and build appropriate communication and engagement strategies to better target these people. We simply don’t have enough people to really parse the data.
  • We use a different tool for scheduling tweets / FB posts (Small Act Thrive).
Likelihood to Renew
9
• Pretty likely to renew. If we can find a single platform that does everything we want to do, we might be tempted to move.
Products Replaced
Not sure. We switched from a different product some years ago.
Implementation Rating
8
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.
Training Types Used
  • Online training
Online Training
8
• 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.
Support Rating
7
• We have a dedicated account rep and he is very capable and helpful. We usually engage through the account rep rather than through support.
Premium Support
No
Usability
6
• 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.
Future Integration Plans
  • Yes. We are working on integration with Adobe Site Catalyst (Omniture) so that we are doing more than simply tracking mentions but are able to pull web analytics data into Radian 6 so that we can see how much of the social media buzz we are tracking actually results in visits to our website or participation in webinars. We have not actually done this integration yet, but intend to do it using in-house resources.
Yes. Radian6 gave us a guide on how to achieve this and we will build the integration soon.
Key Negotiation Points
As a nonprofit, we benefit from the 50% nonprofit discount.
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