When it comes to social media analysis and influence marketing, and the ability to use software to identify and track potential influencers for your brand, one thing that always comes up as a stumbling block is the cost usually associated with it.
Because of the data required to filter and rationalize the findings of platform-specific algorithms, costs usually range from the $700 per month mark to anywhere between $3,000-$5,000 per month. So far, this has meant the benefits of social analysis, as well as true influence marketing, has been limited to mid-to-Enterprise-level businesses and organizations.
One company aiming to change this is Singapore-based Webfluenz.
Addressing the Cost of Social Data
The pricing model makes Webfluenz an attractive solution for businesses of all sizes, but especially smaller-to-medium ones that don’t have the financial muscle a mid-to-large Enterprise-type business has.
For a solo entrepreneur or professional, the free account is a great starting place, with a lot of features that you’d expect to find in a premium solution: sentiment tagging, demographic locale and ad-hoc filtering.
However, when you move up a scale, either to the $299 per month option or the $499 one, this is where Webfluenz really starts to show its benefits, not to mention advantages over similarly priced competitive solutions.
Meeting Multi-Level Business Needs
Let’s say you run with the $299 per month option – ?this is much lower than industry leaders like Radian6 or Sysomos. Heck, even the $499 per month option is. So what are you getting for that, and are you losing features because of the lower cost? Short answer to the features question – no.
Multi-lingual sentiment tagging
Supporting 24 languages of the world’s Internet population, Webfluenz allows you to track around 90% of global languages and allocate sentiment tracking to these conversations. Its proprietary technology breaks common language down into real meaning, as opposed to generic mentions and word definitions.
Qualitative analysis for influencer campaigns
I’m not a fan of judging influence by the amount of amplification an online user can generate. Bots and scripts can inflate numbers. Instead, I’m more impressed by business actions taken based on content shared – sales, leads, downloads, etc. Webfluenz tracks these actions, and the impact on your business, as well as identifies the intent of your target customer (research, compare, buy), enabling a far more effective influencer message can be crafted.
Engagement history
The key to building any kind of business loyalty – online or offline – is the amount you invest in the core relationships that matter. Customer, employee, colleague, stakeholders, etc. Webfluenz tracks all of your enagegements, their levels, frequency, etc., and makes sure you don’t let the most important connections disappear.
Just these three features alone would make an already-attractive price point worthwhile, but the additional features Webfluenz provides takes it up yet another notch.
The Complete Digital Business Suite
One of the biggest complaints around any of the social tools available today is that none of the offer an all-in-one solution.
If you want social monitoring, you need a dedicated monitoring platform. If you want social engagement, you need a good conversation dashboard like a Hootsuite. If you want influence tools, you need ?a Traackr or an InNetwork. If you want a CRM platform, you need a Nimble. And so on.
And this makes sense – it’s rare for any platform to offer an in-depth solution to multiple business needs the way the platforms mentioned above can, in their individual categories.
I’ll give Webfluenz credit here, though – they make a great attempt at answering this criticism.
Competitive analysis
Knowing what works for your competitor, and how they’re driving traffic and sales from their digital efforts, can help you refocus yours and adapt on the fly. Webfluenz shows comparison reports on competitor buzz and growth, while giving you current performance data on your campaigns.
Team collaboration and workspaces
Using a simple workflow process, you can assign team roles and duties within the Webfluenz dashboard, as well as follow up on assignments and use this information across internal teams to improve your internal set-ups.
Dashboard reports
If there’s one thing that any business needs, it’s easy-to-understand reports that deliver the kind of data you can act upon. From Deep Dive Reports to Competitive Benchmarking, as well as Comparative Benchmarking and results, Webfluenz has you covered here.
Webfluenz and You
That’s just a sampling of what’s on offer – the full suite of tools, and the ease in which almost any level of user can start diving in, is what helps Webfluenz stand out in an already crowded marketplace.
Add in a detailed user guide, as well as a hands-on support team and account management guide, and you’re going to be pretty hard pushed to find as cohesive a platform at the price Webfluenz is currently being offered for.
If you’re already using a social analysis platform and you’re happy with its performance and features, then you’re probably not going to change anytime soon.?If you’re currently looking for a new suite of tools, though, and you don’t want to break the bank while doing so, I’d definitely recommend checking Webfluenz out.
If they’d create an open API to connect with other tools, it’d be an even better solution that it currently is. The UI could also be a bit slicker when it comes to the engagement dashboard. But?I’ve mostly been impressed so far and, as a demanding grumpy Scotsman, that’s never an easy thing to do.
Nice work, guys.
Edit, August 30: Just heard from Rachana Khanzode, head of social marketing at Webfluenz, and seems the platform does offer an open API, so integration with other platforms should be good to go.