Netbase: Not Just Another Pretty Social Media Tool
August 14, 2015

Netbase: Not Just Another Pretty Social Media Tool

Sarah Flagg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Current

Overall Satisfaction with NetBase

Netbase is currently being utilized mainly in the PR and social media teams, but also for strategy, new business and branding. In the PR and SoMe team, we use it to do monthly reporting on the conversation surrounding our clients, and also provide realtime updates if an important post occurs. We also use it to track domains for ad buys and use the non-brand topics to find out what publications we should be pitching that has the most social conversation.

For strategy, we can tell our clients the conversation around to a certain industry, allowing us to easily create personas. We're also using Netbase in new business pitches by creating a customized dashboard and doing a live demo.

  • Ease of use: it was easy for everyone in the team to analyze a topic with the tools on the left.
  • Customer service: Kelsee is always available if we have a question and has set things up for us when we're on a time crunch
  • The interface is pretty fast: unlike our previous program (Radian 6), we don't have to wait hours until our content loads.
  • I wish someone would have sat next to us to set up topics. I really struggled learning how they work, and a side-by-side session would have helped
  • I'd love to be able to delete irrelevant posts on the post themselves or in the stream. Instead we have to filter out Exclude terms
  • I'd also love to be able to customize the colors to a client's brand standards.
We're hoping more people can utilize this in the future, but right now, we have our copywriter using it as inspiration for ad copy, social media team using it for monitoring the conversation and reporting, PR team for discovering what publications to target, media buying team to also decide what publications to target, new business team for providing a live demo during a pitch and the strategy team for gleaning valuable insights related to a certain vertical.
  • Increased efficiency for sure; we used to put in at least 6-8 hours for a social media audit, and that can now be done in 2-3 tops. We also used to spend a large amount of hours on reporting. Netbase makes this process much less cumbersome
  • It's also led to an increased understanding of our two core industries: Food ingredients and building products
  • It's also contributed to a more integrated environment. Too often, we get segmented into our departments. Netbase allows for everyone in the agency to be involved.
We've used several different social media tools, and Netbase is by far the best. It's easy to understand (after a topic is set up), easy to export and looks very clean for client presentations. With Radian 6, we got a word cloud, but had to create any other graphs and visuals by hand since they only exported to an Excel. It was the same with Simply Measured, the reporting was just ugly and unpresentable to clients. Visible Intelligence was just inaccurate, and kept pulling in spam posts that were full of porn.
We've only been using Netbase for a few months and can already tell it's a gamechanger for our social media and new business teams. We'll be more likely to renew next year when we can build in the cost of it into our Scopes of Work and future contracts. The hardest part was getting approval beforehand. The service is fantastic and I really like the way the interface is set up.
I think it's very well suited for agencies with multiple clients or large brands. It's extremely expensive, so wouldn't be good for small businesses or smaller agencies. We work mainly in the B2B sector, and it's really nice that Netbase captures very in-depth data since not all of our clients have a large social media presence, even though they're major brands in the industry. I love the ability to create themes, and cross-reference those themes with brands. For example, we can analyze Firestone Building Products metal wall panels in terms of price, quality and installation.

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