Old Skills in a New Context: Brandwatch Social Media Analysis Software
Jinfo Blog

By Chris Porter

Abstract

Brandwatch is a fast-growing, UK-based company which provides a highly sophisticated social media monitoring and analysis tool. Chris Porter looks at how this new-generation software solution makes use of some very familiar information skills.

Item

It's funny how long-established skills sometimes find a new use in an unexpected context.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to get the right information out of a business information database, you had to construct a highly complex search string. The search query would be packed with Boolean operators, field codes and nested logic.

Anyone remember Textline? That was the only way in.

As products became more user-friendly, some of this underlying search logic became built into clickable lists and search boxes. Some vendors continued to support complex command-searching, overtly or quietly; but search habits continued to evolve towards even more simplicity, as the example of Google took hold.

Big Data Makes Focused Results a Must-Have

But the need for precision has not gone away. Take the world of social media monitoring and analysis: the volume of material is vast. But after a quick glance, you may want to eliminate large slices of it as spam or irrelevance, and focus only on the information that truly matters to your business.

Brandwatch is a UK-based provider of social media monitoring and analysis software. It also has offices in the US and Germany, is expanding rapidly and counts some of the world's leading brands among its clients.

It prides itself on the sophistication of its search capabilities.

Sophisticated Precision Search Tools

When a user is defining what social media content they wish to look at, Brandwatch provides them with very extensive Boolean support, including AND/OR/NOT, nested logic and searching on specific fielded content such as sites, titles or authors.

It supports proximity operators and provides special search options for handling non-alphanumeric characters.

It lets users drill down by the region, country, county or even town associated with the information sources it covers.

Figure 1: Complex query creation

Once you see your search results, there is plenty more you can do to slice and dice the content by different facets, to help you deliver meaningful, high-value research conclusions.

It is, for the information professional, surprisingly familiar territory.

If you want the ability to do really precise, targeted searching, filtering and analysis on a wide range of social media content, including in multiple locations and languages, and you want rapid updating and a deep archive, this product is definitely something to consider.

Watch out for further updates on the fast-changing world of social media.

Editor's Note

Read Chris Porter's introduction to FreePint's focus on social media monitoring tools, which runs during March and April 2014, in Social Media Monitoring: the Options.

Editor's Note: Full Review

Brandwatch has a host of interesting features. The full FreePint Report: Product Review of Brandwatch is now available to those with a FreePint Subscription.

Articles in series:

• Brandwatch: Introduction and Contact Details
• Brandwatch: Sources, Content and Coverage
• Brandwatch: Technology - Search; Outputs & Alerts; User Interface & Help
• Brandwatch: Value, Development & Pricing

Full report (PDF) contains all of the above content, in a convenient package for reference and sharing:

• Product Review of Brandwatch

Editor's Note: Beyond Aggregation

FreePint readers may be interested to read more about news products in our FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation, which ran from October to November 2013. You can still register your interest to receive a free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on News Content published in early December.

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