There are lots of great online tools for media monitoring. How do you know which one is right for you? I’ve tried and tested lots of tools – here’s my review of some of the best in PR monitoring.
Buzzsumo is predominantly a content tool, designed to help you discover what your audience wants to engage with and identify influencers. Although media monitoring is more of an add-on feature, it’s really good.
Pros
- Nice walk through to set up first alert
- Captures a lot of coverage instantly
- You can easily block domains, such as your own
- User-friendly dashboard which displays an easy-to-interpret graph of coverage secured
- Coverage can be viewed on the dashboard, exported or via email alerts
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Cons
- Mentions cannot be exported on the free trial
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Free trial?
- Yes, 14 days on the Pro Plan
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Cost
- Prices start from $99 for 10 brand mentions
- Contact Buzzsumo for discounted non-profit rates
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Reviews
Talkwalker gathers social intelligence by looking at social media for which you can monitor everything from reach, engagement and audience activity. It also looks at coverage mentions.
Pros
- Very easy to set up, similar to Google Alerts
- Seven days of historic data available on the free version (paid versions can backtrack a year)
- Results can be emailed once set up is complete, reducing need to log back into platform
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Cons
- Need to wait to be emailed the results
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Free trial?
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Cost
- Free if you don’t mind a restricted account. However, if you want to research more than five topics, the lowest plan is $420 a month
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Reviews
Google Alerts is a powerful media monitoring tool with phenomenal reach.
Pros
- Quick to set up
- The interface has had a redesign so nicer to use than a few years ago
- It’s free
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Cons
- Most of the alerts come from news sites which means blogs and forums are sometimes ignored
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Cost
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Mention.com is one of my favourites. It’s easy to use and allows you to track PR campaigns, identify influencers, and create reports quickly.
Pros
- Intuitive. You can get going very quickly
- Ability to assign tasks to team members is great for team collaboration
- The keyword crawler and filters work well so your coverage isn’t lost
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Cons
- Sentiment analysis wasn’t accurate when I tested it
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Free Trial?
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Cost
- Plans start at $29 a month for two campaigns/3000 mentions
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Backed by industry-leading data and one of the largest community of SEO experts on the planet, Moz builds tools that make online marketing easy
Pros
- Very quick, simple and easy to use
- You can download mentions to a CSV file
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Cons
- Simple, so if you hope to get really deep insights, it’s not the one for you.
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Free Trial?
- Yes but you need to put your card details in and cancel otherwise, you’ll be automatically upgraded
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Cost
- Plans start at $99 a month for five campaigns/300 keywords
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Reviews
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Measuring your brand: it takes more than one measure