Great post, I just came across it on the web managers roundtable group on LinkedIn.

Have you evaluated RightNow Technologies’ Cloud Monitor tool? You can view a flash demo here:
http://www.rightnow.com/resource-demo-cloud-monitor.php

Let me know if you would like to talk further.

Andrew

Thanks for the validation comments. I appreciate Radian6’s perspective in the conversation (and your offer of help).

Mike

Thanks for the nice comments. We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again with another set of tools that are mis-understood by the audience because of the hype. I believe that most of the vendors are trying to temper the expectations of their prospects. But the idea of setting up a tool on autopilot is so appealing that most customers miss the point about how much work it takes to get relevant, valuable results.

For example, if you run a report on our client Cisco Systems with the term router or telecommunications as general key words and then reduce the scale by introducing negative key words for jobs, stocks, investments, press releases, etc. you’ll still get over 1500 results just from blogs each day.

You can set up multiple well defined searches with product names or services, but as soon as you add a big brand name the content the returns become massive. With the re-posting of content all over the web there is a lot to sift through to find the value. Auto piloting the reports may work for some smaller brands, but for major brands it takes time and staff to distill the real insights.

Mike

If you need any assistance with the dashboard you refer to in the comments, please let us know so we can work with you and your client to get the most out of this robust tool.

Lauren Vargas
Community Manager at Radian6
@VargasL

We did look at filtrbox as part of our review, we had a great demo session of the product. It is solid and we are telling folks that it is definitely one of the products to consider as part of the selection process.

Mike

Nice post, cleverly done.
Not sure if you reviewed Filtrbox in the process. We just had a massive release with new features and coverage. If you’d be interested in a demo/trial, let me know and we’ll help you get down the yellow brick road.

Michael Fraietta
Filtrbox
@MichaelFraietta
http://fbx.bz/E

Thanks for the comment. After our reviews, we actually are using several solutions and still testing them against each other. Our primary tool for now is Scoutlabs, with support from several community tracking tools as well. A client has access to Radian6 and we’re comparing notes to see which does the best job. Interestingly enough from a raw data standpoint the tools are about even. The sentiment analysis is slightly different at times, but that can be updated by the user. But because of the intensity of community members, we have to supplement the tools with a secondary tool as well.

We are looking into building a dashboard that will allow us to receive better community information as well as a full Twitter feed in addition to the blog and comment content in a single page to make the process even more efficient.

Edited by Mike – Just saw your SMM tool for Jive SBS. How is the adoption going?

Just curious, what buzz monitoring tool did you end up going with after your assessment?