“Social media monitoring is the activity of tracking social media channels. Organizations measure and use social media analytics tools to find out where are the discussions about them, their competition and other topics of interest. Social media monitoring includes measuring opinions and sentiment of groups and influencers. It includes historical data and other information. The goal is to assess the reputation and be alerted to significant events taking place in social channels.” ~ Dreamgrow
As an OSINT investigator, you’re only as good as the tools you have to monitor social media chatter for your corporate clients. If you’re tracking a client’s brand online, you need to know what people are saying and sharing or stealing on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, among others.
Dreamgrow, a content marketing and social media information resource, published an article that gave us pause: Could there really be 47 social media monitoring tools? And, did we have them all in Hg’s toolbelt? Scrolling through the list, we found old standards such as Hootsuite. But we also stumbled upon some new ones!
Cyfe
Cyfe was one that really jumped out as a great mashup tool that captures social media, along with web analytics, marketing, and salesforce data. The platform offers a variety of special features, including branded reports, domain name mapping, dashboard backgrounds, social publishing, and pre-built widgets. Some of Cyfe’s offerings are free. A premier subscription, which gives you 20+ dashboards and unlimited widgets, historical data, exports, sharing options, customizations is $89+ for unlimited users a month.
ZoomSphere
Based in the Czech Republic, ZoomSphere is a one-stop shop for social media needs: publishing, analytics, customer care, monitoring, reporting, and comparisons. Free services include Facebook Reach Reports, Facebook Reactions Analytics, and Agency Reports. If interested in a monthly subscription of al products, simply reach out to their Business team at https://www.zoomsphere.com/contact. Individual pricing for their products are as follows: €149 /month for Scheduling and Publishing, Monitoring, and Customer Care, €89 /month for both Analytics and Comparisons. A free 31-day trial is also available if necessary.
Like what you’re reading? Maximize your online investigations with shortcuts, tips, trending investigative tools, and advanced research techniques for all skill levels at the 6th Annual OSMOSIScon in San Diego, October 11 – 13. Join 100s of other cyber intel specialists and immerse yourself in engaging OSINT/SOCMINT workshops (up to 16 CEUs) and explore the Expo, where on-point solution professionals offer experiential learning on their latest products and services to enhance your research and investigations.
Matt and Trevor are investigative analysts at Hetherington Group, where they use their open source research skills to extract data from social media accounts, conduct risk assessments, and monitor subjects for clients in pharma, tech, retail, and entertainment. Both are contributing writers to Hg’s Data2Know, Industry Undercover, and OSINT Slack channels. On their lunch breaks, they can be found outside playing frisbee with their four-legged colleagues.
